Network Administrator Essay, Research Paper

Imagine

yourself as a network administrator, responsible for a 2000 user network. This

network reaches from California to New York, and some branches over seas. In

this situation, anything can, and usually does go wrong, but it would be your

job as a system administrator to resolve the problem with it arises as quickly

as possible. The last thing you would want is for your boss to call you up,

asking why you haven?t done anything to fix the 2 major systems that have been

down for several hours. How do you explain to him that you didn?t even know

about it? Would you even want to tell him that? So now, picture yourself in the

same situation, only this time, you were using a network monitoring program.

Sitting in front of a large screen displaying a map of the world, leaning back

gently in your chair. A gentle warning tone sounds, and looking at your display,

you see that California is now glowing a soft red in color, in place of the

green glow just moments before. You select the state of California, and it zooms

in for a closer look. You see a network diagram overview of all the computers

your company has within California. Two systems are flashing, with an X on top

of them indicating that they are experiencing problems. Tagging the two systems,

you press enter, and with a flash, the screen displays all the statitics of the

two systems, including anything they might have in common causing the problem.

Seeing that both systems are linked to the same card of a network switch, you

pick up the phone and give that branch office a call, notifying them not only

that they have a problem, but how to fix it as well. Early in the days of

computers, a central computer (called a mainframe) was connected to a bunch of

dumb terminals using a standard copper wire. Not much thought was put into how

this was done because there was only one way to do it: they were either

connected, or they weren?t. Figure 1 shows a diagram of these early systems.

If something went wrong with this type of system, it was fairly easy to

troubleshoot, the blame almost always fell on the mainframe system. Shortly

after the introduction of Personal Computers (PC), came Local Area Networks

(LANS), forever changing the way in which we look at networked systems. LANS

originally consisted of just PC?s connected into groups of computers, but soon

after, there came a need to connect those individual LANS together forming what

is known as a Wide Area Network, or WAN, the result was a complex connection of

computers joined together using various types of interfaces and protocols.

Figure 2 shows a modern day WAN. Last year, a survey of Fortune 500 companies

showed that 15% of their total computer budget, 1.6 Million dollars, was spent

on network management (Rose, 115). Because of this, much attention has focused

on two families of network management protocols: The Simple Network Management

Protocol (SNMP), which comes from a de facto standards based background of

TCP/IP communication, and the Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP),

which derives from a de jure standards-based background associated with the Open

Systems Interconnection (OSI) (Fisher, 183). In this report I will cover

advantages and disadvantages of both Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP)

and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)., as well as discuss a new

protocol for the future. I will also give some good reasons supporting why I

believe that SNMP is a protocol that all network administrators should use. SNMP

is a protocol that enables a management station to configure, monitor, and

receive trap (alarm) messages from network devices. (Feit, 12). It is formally

specified in a series of related Request for Comment (RFC) documents, listed

here. RFC 1089 – SNMP over Ethernet RFC 1140 – IAB Official Protocol Standards

RFC 1147 – Tools for Monitoring and Debugging TCP/IP Internets and

Interconnected Devices [superceded by RFC 1470] RFC 1155 – Structure and

Identification of Management Information for TCP/IP based internets. RFC 1156 -

Management Information Base Network Management of TCP/IP based internets RFC

1157 – A Simple Network Management Protocol RFC 1158 – Management Information

Base Network Management of TCP/IP based internets: MIB-II RFC 1161 – SNMP over

OSI RFC 1212 – Concise MIB Definitions RFC 1213 – Management Information Base

for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets: MIB-II RFC 1215 – A Convention

for Defining Traps for use with the SNMP RFC 1298 – SNMP over IPX (SNMP, Part 1

of 2, I.1.) The first protocol developed was the Simple Network Management

Protocol (SNMP). It was commonly considered to be a quickly designed

?band-aid? solution to internetwork management difficulties while other,

larger and better protocols were being designed. (Miller, 46). However, no

better choice became available, and SNMP soon became the network management

protocol of choice. It works very simply (as the name suggests): it exchanges

network packets through messages (known as protocol data units (PDU)). The PDU

contains variables that have both titles and values. There are five types of

PDU?s which SNMP uses to monitor a network: two deal with reading terminal

data, two with setting terminal data, and one called the trap, used for

monitoring network events, such as terminal start-ups or shut-downs. By far the

largest advantage of SNMP over CMIP is that its design is simple, so it is as

easy to use on a small network as well as on a large one, with ease of setup,

and lack of stress on system resources. Also, the simple design makes it simple

for the user to program system variables that they would like to monitor.

Another major advantage to SNMP is that is in wide use today around the world.

Because of it?s development during a time when no other protocol of this type

existed, it became very popular, and is a built in protocol supported by most

major vendors of networking hardware, such as hubs, bridges, and routers, as

well as majoring operating systems. It has even been put to use inside the

Coca-Cola machines at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California (Borsook,

48). Because of SNMP?s smaller size, it has even been implemented in such

devices as toasters, compact disc players, and battery-operated barking dogs. In

the 1990 Interop show, John Romkey, vice president of engineering for Epilogue,

demonstrated that through an SNMP program running on a PC, you could control a

standard toaster through a network (Miller, 57). SNMP is by no means a perfect

network manager. But because of it?s simple design, these flaws can be fixed.

The first problem realized by most companies is that there are some rather large

security problems related with SNMP. Any decent hacker can easily access SNMP

information, giving them any information about the network, and also the ability

to potentially shut down systems on the network. The latest version of SNMP,

called SNMPv2, has added some security measures that were left out of SNMP, to

combat the 3 largest problems plaguing SNMP: Privacy of Data (to prevent

intruders from gaining access to information carried along the network),

authentication (to prevent intruders from sending false data across the

network), and access control (which restricts access of particular variables to

certain users, thus removing the possibility of a user accidentally crashing the

network). (Stallings, 213) The largest problem with SNMP, ironically enough, is

the same thing that made it great; it?s simple design. Because it is so

simple, the information it deals with is neither detailed, nor well organized

enough to deal with the growing networks of the 1990?s. This is mainly due to

the quick creation of SNMP, because it was never designed to be the network

management protocol of the 1990?s. Like the previous flaw, this one too has

been corrected with the new version, SNMPv2. This new version allows for more

in-detail specification of variables, including the use of the table data

structure for easier data retrieval. Also added are two new PDU?s that are

used to manipulate the tabled objects. In fact, so many new features have been

added that the formal specifications for SNMP have expanded from 36 pages (with

v1) to 416 pages with SNMPv2. (Stallings, 153) Some people might say that SNMPv2

has lost the simplicity, but the truth is that the changes were necessary, and

could not have been avoided. A management station relies on the agent at a

device to retrieve or update the information at the device. The information is

viewed as a logical database, called a Management Information Base, or MIB. MIB

modules describe MIB variables for a large variety of device types, computer

hardware, and software components. The original MIB for Managing a TCP/IP

internet (now called MIB-I) was defined in RFC 1066 in August of 1988. It was

updated in RFC 1156 in May of 1990. The MIB-II version published in RFC 1213 in

May of 1991, contained some improvements, and has proved that it can do a good

job of meeting basic TCP/IP management needs. MIB-II added many useful variables

missing from MIB-I (Feit, 85). MIB files are common variables used not only by

SNMP, but CMIP as well. In the late 1980?s a project began, funded by

governments, and large corporations. Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP)

was born. Many thought that because of it?s nearly infinite development

budget, that it would quickly become in widespread use, and overthrow SNMP from

it?s throne. Unfortunately, problems with its implementation have delayed its

use, and it is now only available in limited form from developers themselves. (SNMP,

Part 2 of 2, III.40.) CMIP was designed to be better than SNMP in every way by

repairing all flaws, and expanding on what was good about it, making it a bigger

and more detailed network manager. It?s design is similar to SNMP, where

PDU?s are used as variables to monitor the network. CMIP however contains 11

types of PDU?s (compared to SNMP?s 5). In CMIP, the variables are seen as

very complex and sophisticated data structures with three attributes. These

include: 1) Variable attributes: which represent the variables characteristics

(its data type, whether it is writable) 2) variable behaviors: what actions of

that variable can be triggered. 3) Notifications: the variable generates an

event report whenever a specified event occurs (eg. A terminal shutdown would

cause a variable notification event) (Comer, 82) As a comparison, SNMP only

employs variable properties from one and three above. The biggest feature of the

CMIP protocol is that its variables not only relay information to and from the

terminal (as in SNMP) , but they can also be used to perform tasks that would be

impossible under SNMP. For instance, if a terminal on a network cannot reach the

fileserver a pre-determined amount of times, then CMIP can notify appropriate

personnel of the event. With SNMP however, a user would have to specifically

tell it to keep track of unsuccessful attempts to reach the server, and then

what to do when that variable reaches a limit. CMIP therefore results in a more

efficient management system, and less work is required from the user to keep

updated on the status of the network. CMIP also contains the security measures

left out by SNMP. Because of the large development budget, when it becomes

available, CMIP will be widely used by the government, and the corporations that

funded it. After reading the above paragraph, you might wonder why, if CMIP is

this wonderful, is it not being used already? (after all, it had been in

development for nearly 10 years) The answer is that possibly CMIP?s only major

disadvantage, is enough in my opinion to render it useless. CMIP requires about

ten times the system resources that are needed for SNMP. In other words, very

few systems in the world would able to handle a full implementation on CMIP

without undergoing massive network modifications. This disadvantage has no

inexpensive fix to it. For that reason, many believe CMIP is doomed to fail. The

other flaw in CMIP is that it is very difficult to program. Its complex nature

requires so many different variables that only a few skilled programmers are

able to use it to it?s full potential. Considering the above information, one

can see that both management systems have their advantages and disadvantages.

However the deciding factor between the two, lies with their implementation, for

now, it is almost impossible to find a system with the necessary resources to

support the CMIP model, even though it is superior to SNMP (v1 and v2) in both

design and operation. Many people believe that the growing power of modern

systems will soon fit well with CMIP model, and might result in it?s

widespread use, but I believe by the time that day comes, SNMP could very well

have adapted itself to become what CMIP currently offers, and more. As we?ve

seen with other products, once a technology achieves critical mass, and a

substantial installed base, it?s quite difficult to convince users to rip it

out and start fresh with an new and unproven technology (Borsook, 48). It is

then recommend that SNMP be used in a situation where minimial security is

needed, and SNMPv2 be used where security is a high priority.

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Sharon. ?Dueling Protocols.? Byte March 1991: 183-190. Horwitt, Elisabeth.

?SNMP holds steady as network standard.? Computerworld June 1, 1992: 53-54.

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Miller, Mark A., P.E. Managing Internetworks with SNMP New York: M&T Books,

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January 16, 1995: 58. Moore, Steve. ?Users weigh benefits of DMI, SNMP.?

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?SNMP: Not so simple.? MacUser October 1992: 237-240