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An overview of Lucent Technologies' CyberCarrier Solution service and network management architecture is presented. CyberCarrier is designed for network service providers (NSP) expanding their services to include ASP data-center hosting. Offering ASP services diversifies and expands an NSP's revenue, but creates management complexities. CyberCarrier providers can address these issues by adopting an abstract functional architecture that takes a divide-and-conquer approach. CyberCarrier Solution readily maps onto a carefully chosen set of functional management modules.

Low-cost, high-speed client/server communication is facilitating enterprise services that streamline processes, cut costs and increase revenue, while network providers are shifting from offering simple transport facilities to value-added servers in order to remain profitable. Service management requirements and their corresponding components are discussed as they pertain to ongoing activities in Lucent Technologies business units. Emerging networks consist of access, core, client and application segments. Functional service management layers include service management, inter-domain network management, domain management and domain.

Lucent Technologies' Lucent Intelligent Network Agent (LucINA) and its applications exemplify how intelligent agents can be used to address the unpredictable behavior characteristics of heterogeneous networks. Agent communication languages (ACL) can be used to provide universal wrappers for content, together with a capability to negotiate communication means, including language, protocol, and domain terminology.

Lucent Technologies' activities, tools, technologies and designs in research involving network management are surveyed. Current research is discussed in a context that discusses the evolution of network management.