ATM customer network management using WWW and CORBA technologies

In this paper, we present a framework for managing ATM customer networks using WWW and CORBA technologies. The WWW technology may provide network management operators with platform independence, location independence, friendly and/or consistent management behavior as well as secure management operations. The main problems in a Web-based network management system may include limited management capabilities of HTTP operations and lack of supporting mechanisms for trap or event notifications. These problems are, in this paper, solved by the integration of Java and CORBA technologies. We extend the current Web technology which is being used for transferring various information on Internet to those which can be used to transfer management requests and replies as well as event notifications. A Web browser is used as a universal user interface for monitoring and controlling the activities of the ATM customer networks. We have developed an integrated customer network management system which can manage SNMP-enabled or CMIP-enabled network devices and provide ATM CNM services. In particular, we applied the CORBA technology to accommodate several management protocols such as SNMP, CMIP and other management protocols. Through the CORBA IDL-to-Java mapping, complex management operations as well as event notifications are supported without modification of the current WWW systems.