Network Management and Control

Three speakers at the Second Workshop on Network Management and Control nostalgically remembered the INTEROP Conference at which SNMP was able to interface even to CD players and toasters. We agreed this was indeed a major step forward in standards, but wondered if anyone noticed whether the toast was burned, let alone, would want to eat it. The assurance of the correct operation of practical systems under difficult environments emerged as the dominant theme of the workshop with growth, interoperability, performance, and scalability as the primary sub-themes. Perhaps this thrust is un surprising, since about half the 100 or so attendees were from industry, with a strong contingency of users. Indeed the technical program co-chairs, Shivendra Panwar of Polytechnic and Walter Johnston of NYNEX, took as their assignment the coverage of real problems and opportunities in industry. Nevertheless we take it as a real indication of progress in the field that the community is beginning to take for granted the availability of standards and even the ability to detect physical, link, and network-level faults and is now expecting diagnostics at higher levels as well as system-wide solutions.