Network management using WBEM (Web-Based Enterprise Management)

In this report, the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standard is evaluated for the possible use in the Ericsson NMS (Network Management System). The WBEM standard is still being developed, but has already received the backing of most of the network management industry. This report has evaluated the different parts that make up the WBEM standard and found it to be an extremely versatile and generalized standard that can be applied in almost any area of network management. The downside of being that general is of course that the performance can not reach the levels attained by a simpler protocol. To get a reference to current network management standard, a comparison of WBEM with SNMP has been performed. Also, to see that these theoretical conclusions hold up, a prototype of a WBEM access module for NMS has been developed. That prototype has been tested and its performance has been compared to an SNMP equivalent. This prototype has also shown how WBEM can be integrated into NMS in a simple and extendable fashion, which is an important lesson if the future requires NMS to manage network elements with a WBEM management interface. The results of all this shows that WBEM will most likely have a large impact on how network management is performed and most systems will have to consider supporting WBEM. But it also shows that on a network with limited bandwidth, WBEM might not be an ideal choice for the manager.Validerat; 20101217 (root