JPH06205011A - Network management system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To attain the centralized management of an equipment connected on the LAN at a side to be managed which is not equipped with an agent function by providing a function which substitutes the agent function and the function which stores management information at an internetwork device at the side to be managed. CONSTITUTION:In a network model, the LAN at the side to be managed is connected through an internetworking device 12A with a wide area network 10, and a manager 16 which operates a multiple control is connected with an equipment 14 to be managed. Then, the internetworking device 12A at the side to be managed is equipped with the function which substitutes the agent function of the equipment 14 connected with the LAN which is not equipped with the agent function, and the function which stores the management information of the equipment 14. Therefore, the agent function can be substituted by the internetworking device 12A, so that the centralized management of the equipment 14 can be attained.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a network management system, and more particularly to management of a network in which various local area networks (LAN) scattered in remote areas are interconnected by an inter-networking device via a wide area network (WAN). The present invention relates to a network management system suitable for application.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Various local area networks (LANs) scattered in remote areas are interconnected via a wide area network by an inter-networking device connected to each LAN via a wide area network (MAN), and are connected to each LAN. A manager (center) that connects the connected devices to one LAN
A network management system that centrally manages by is known.

The various LANs described above include, for example, IEEE.
802.3 CSMA / CD, IEEE802.4 T
OKEN BUS, IEEE802.5 TOKEN
RING and ETHERNET, and inter-networking devices include breezes, routers and gateways.

The management method in the network management system is shown in FIG.
Management information (managed objects) from managed devices on N
Based on a manager / agent model that is composed of an agent that collects and reports it to the integration destination (manager) and a manager that manages based on the information from the agent. The polling method that has become an industry standard for terminals, for example, the management protocol SNMP (Simple Network Managem
ent Protocol) is used to manage communication between managers and agents.

As described above, when a device connected to a LAN at a remote location through a wide area network is managed by a management protocol SNMP which is an industry standard polling system, each device on the LAN (agent ) Polls every time and asks for a reply (reply).

Therefore, the device to be managed must have an agent function that responds to polling from the manager.

[0007]

However, since a device having no agent function is also connected to the LAN to be managed, such a device cannot be managed by the manager. It was

The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned conventional problems, and even when a device connected to the LAN on the managed side does not have an agent function,
An object is to provide a network management system capable of performing centralized (integrated) management for the device.

[0009]

According to the present invention, a plurality of local area networks (LAN) are connected to a wide area network (WAN).
The devices connected to each LAN are interconnected by an inter-networking device connected to each LAN via
In a network management system in which a manager connected to one LAN centrally manages, a function of acting as an agent function for a device that does not have an agent function and is connected to an applicable inter-networking device on the managed side, and an agent The above problem is achieved by having a function of storing management information of a device having no function.

[0010]

The present invention was made by paying attention to the fact that the basic technology of the internetwork (interconnection between networks) has the following features.

(1) The protocol used for communication management of each network has a frame structure in which the protocols (conventions) of each layer are aggregated and encapsulated in the form of a header, as seen in the seven-layer structure of OSI, for example. Therefore, some management information can be collected based on the header information. An example of the frame structure for LAN is shown in FIGS. 3 and 4. In the figure, IP stands for Internet Protcol,
Establishes a transmission path and logically manages the network according to the protocol specification of the third layer (network layer) of the seven-layer structure of OSI. For example, from the header, I or
P-address information can be collected. TCP is Transmission
Control Protocol is the flow control and re-sending to prevent data loss according to the protocol specification of the 4th layer (transport layer) of the 7-layer structure of OSI. For example, the TC of the sender or destination from this header
P-port information can be collected. In addition, UDP (User Datag
ram Protocl) is a protocol specification of the 4th layer (transport layer) of the 7-layer structure of OSI, and is used when reliable data transmission is not so important as compared to TCP or when only a small amount of data is transferred. . PDU (Proto
col Data Unit) is a unit handled as the protocol data, that is, a packet, and is the SNMP in the figure.
Then there are 5 types of PDUs in all. The five types of PDUs are (i) Get Request-PDU and (ii) Get Nex.
t Request-PDU, (iii) Get Response-PD
U, (iv) Set Request-PDU, (v) Trap-P
DU, of which (i), (ii), and (iv) are collectively referred to as request PDU.

(2) Since all the transmission messages pass through the internetworking device, the internetworking device is in a position where the management information for the connected device can be collected.

In the present invention, the inter-networking device on the managed side is provided with a function of acting as an agent function for a device which does not have an agent function and which is connected to the corresponding LAN, and management information of the device which does not have the agent function. Since it has the function of storing, it becomes possible to proxy the agent function of the device which does not have the agent function to the internetworking device on the side to which the device to be managed is connected, on the same LAN. Even if the device does not have the agent function, it is possible to perform centralized management for the device.

The concept of agent proxying has existed in the past, but this is to keep one management protocol consistent with another protocol and to collect management information from a normal message exchange protocol. , Which is essentially different from proxying the management protocol as in the present invention.

[0015]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing a schematic configuration of an adaptive network model to which a network management system according to an embodiment of the present invention is applied.

The above network model is based on the wide area network (W
A plurality of LANs on the managed side are connected to the AN) 10 via the inter-networking device 12A, and the LAN on the manager side is connected to the AN) 10 via the inter-networking device 12B. A manager 16 for managing is connected. In addition, a plurality of managed devices 14 are provided on the managed LAN, and a device 1 is also provided on the manager LAN.
4A are respectively connected.

In this embodiment, the inter-networking device 12A on the managed side has the configuration shown in FIG. 2, and the inter-networking device 12A will be described in detail below.

The internetworking device 12A
Is a message transmitting / receiving device 20 for transmitting / receiving an SNMP message (request reply) to / from the manager 16 via the wide area network 10, a message processing device 22 for processing the transmitted / received message, and an agent connected to the LAN. An agent proxy device 24 that represents the agent function of a device that does not have a function, and a LAN
The LAN frame processing device 26 that processes the frames flowing upward and the management information (MIB: Management Infor) connected to the LAN that does not have an agent function.
mation Base: MIB that stores (hereinafter also referred to as MIB)
And a storage device 28.

Further, the message processing device 22 has a destination detecting function for detecting the destination of the device which is the target of the SNMP message (request) from the manager, a decoding function for decoding (analyzing) the message, and a request. On the other hand, it has a message generation function for generating a response message and a protocol processing function for processing the SNMP protocol.

Further, the LAN frame processing device 26 is
It has a frame acquisition function of acquiring a frame flowing on the LAN, an address detection function of detecting an address for identifying a device from the frame, and a frame analysis function of analyzing the frame.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be described.

In this embodiment, the operation of collecting the management information of the device having no agent function and proxying the management agent function will be described with reference to the flow charts shown in FIGS.

First, on the managed side, the frame flowing on the LAN is captured by the frame acquisition function of the LAN frame processing device 26 (step 110), and then the address detection function of the device 26 is used as shown in FIG. The address is detected from the header information of the frame (LAN MAC header, IP header, TCP header), the device to be managed is identified (step 112), and the header information of the frame is analyzed by the frame analysis function.
It is reflected in the IB information (step 114).

Next, the MIB information in which the header information is reflected in step 114 is stored in the MIB storage device 28 as the MIB for the device identified in step 112 (step 116), and the device information in the LAN on the managed side is stored. To collect.

On the other hand, when there is an SNMP request polling from the manager, the replying operation of the internetworking device 12A is performed as follows.

First, the SNMP sent from the manager
A message (request) is sent to the message transmitting / receiving device 20.
(Step 120), and the message processing device 22 receives it.
4 detects the destination IP address from the frame shown in FIG. 4 in which the SNMP message is encapsulated by the destination detection function of the device included in the device (step 122), and then corresponds to the above IP address detected by the protocol processing function of the message processing device 22. It is determined whether the device to be used has an agent function (step 124).

If the corresponding device has the agent function, it is sent to the LAN as it is (step 126), and if not, the message processing device 2
2 decodes the request of the SNMP message by the decoding function of 2 (step 128), and in the next step 130 it is a request that can reply reply,
That is, it is judged whether or not it is stored as the MIB, and if it is not stored, an error reply is returned to the manager (step 132).

On the other hand, if it is stored as the MIB, the relevant MIB information is extracted by the protocol processing function of the message processing device 22 (step 134),
With the same function, a reply message for the request of the SNMP message is generated (step 136), and then the message transmitting / receiving device 20 transmits the SNMP message (reply) to the manager (step 138).

By performing the above operation, even if the device connected to the LAN to be managed does not have the agent function, the internetworking device 12
Since the agent A can substitute the agent function, it is possible to centrally manage a device that does not have the agent function.

The present invention has been specifically described above, but the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiments, and various modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the invention.

For example, the specific configuration of the internetworking device and the specific configuration of the frame used for information transmission are not limited to those shown in the above embodiment.

[0033]

As described above, according to the present invention, centralized (integrated) management of a device connected to a LAN to be managed even if the device does not have an agent function. You can

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing a network system to which the method of the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an inter-networking device connected to a LAN to be managed.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a frame structure for LAN.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing an encapsulated frame structure.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is another flowchart for explaining the operation of the embodiment.

FIG. 7 is still another flowchart for explaining the operation of the embodiment.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram showing a standard management model in a network.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 ... Wide area network (WAN) 12A, 12B ... Inter-networking device 14, 14A ... Equipment 16 ... Manager 20 ... SNMP message transmitting / receiving device 22 ... SNMP message processing device 24 ... Agent proxy device 26 ... LAN frame processing device 28 ... MIB storage device

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A plurality of local area networks (LA)
N) are interconnected by an inter-networking device connected to each LAN via a wide area network (WAN), and each L
In a network management system for centrally managing a device connected to an AN by a manager connected to one LAN, an agent for a device that does not have an agent function and is connected to a corresponding LAN in a managed inter-networking device A network management system having a function of proxying a function and a function of storing management information of a device having no agent function.