The management of the mobile network with COM+ and SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol is currently the most popular network management technology. It remains the most widely used network management technology, mainly because of its simplicity and efficiency. It seems to be the only technology able to manage low-rate mobile networks. Microsoft´s Component Object Model is the most popular component technology, enabling software integration on Windows-based machines. It allows, among other things, combining components, created in various programming languages and in different development environments, into flexible component applications. COM+ is the next version of COM, integrating COM, MTS and additional COM+ services. The paper describes the management system for the Polish mobile network, which has been designed and is being developed in the Military Communication Institute. The paper presents the reasons for which SNMP has been chosen as the main management technology. It discusses the efficiency of management protocols in low-rate networks and describes problems caused by the simplicity of the information model used by SNMP and the way the problems were overcome. The paper also discusses the advantages of building the manager-side software on COM+-especially replacing typical, separate management applications with a lightweight component-based management environment. The paper is organized as follows: first, it briefly describes the mobile network and the reasons for choosing SNMP as the management technology; then, it discusses the advantages of using COM+ as the software technology for manager-side applications.