Management and control for giant gigabit networks

The authors describe the new challenges presented for the management of broadband networks and outline the framework of the COMET research group at Columbia University for finding solutions to these challenges. They review a prototype that implements some of the requirements for managing the broadband networks of the future. In the COMET framework, management operations are defined in terms of primitives with a much higher semantic level than that typified by get and set in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) management model, and the user interface to the managed system is based on virtual worlds that allow the manager to directly visualize and interact with the network. The impact that this new environment may have on existing management architectures is discussed.<>