Method for overcoming address conflicts among disparate networks is a network management system

Abstract

Converged network management application and system is provided that delivers a management platform as a service that can view and / or manage all managed networks in the aggregate, or any one of them individually (including individual devices within the managed networks), in a secure and efficient manner, providing continuously available intelligence in real time on the managed networks and systems, and overcoming integration issues including conflicting address schemas, the need to avoid unnecessary infrastructure, and the need acquire all necessary information in real time within applicable memory and bandwidth constraints.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit of the filing date of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61 / 085,407, filed Jul. 31, 2008, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. This application also incorporates by reference the entire disclosures of the following copending U.S. patent applications filed on the same date as this application: U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12 / ______, 12 / ______, and 12 / ______.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention is in the field of network management and support. More specifically, the invention provides a system for remotely and securely monitoring and managing a plurality of disparate networks and systems, which, among other capabilities, can monitor events in real time, selectively or globally, throughout all managed networks, and access and manage individual network elements to any internal depth within each managed network, withou...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]It is an object of the invention to provide methods for managing and servicing a plurality of disparate networks from a single, common infrastructure, without requiring any owner of the networks or systems being managed to change any topological features or elements.

[0018]It is a further object of the invention to facilitate management and servicing methods for a plurality of disparate networks by providing a method for overcoming address space collisions that might exist between managed networks and systems.

[0019]It is another object of the invention to provide a uniform and comprehensive method and protocol for routing communications among management elements, so as to be able to build management infrastructures extensibly based on a manageable selection of fundamental management elements.

[0020]It is also an object of the invention to provide a method, in a system for managing and supporting disparate networks and systems, for remotely viewing realtime information about multiple network management processes, without accepting either an overwhelming amount of irrelevant data or restricting the data view so as to exclude relevant data.

[0022]To achieve these objectives, the present invention, in one embodiment, provides a system for monitoring and managing a plurality of disparate networks and systems from a centralized physical location that is separate from the location of any of the managed networks or systems, in which the operations are effected without requiring the owner of any network or systems being managed to change any topological features or elements and without requiring a dedicated connection to any of the managed networks. This system can be provided as service, by which a user can view and / or manage all managed networks in the aggregate, or any one of them individually.

[0023]To facilitate the ability to manage a plurality of disparate networks and systems, the invention further provides, in said embodiment, the ability to manage network topologies with overlapping IP address schemas for their respective elements, by combining, within each element's local domain, a unique identifier with the address of the element, and making the combined unique identifier available to the other elements in the management system.

Problems solved by technology

Modern data and communications networks are highly complex and require substantial management in order to keep those networks and the services they provide up and running smoothly.

Many organizations require complex networks, but lack the resources to manage them, lack the budget to acquire a fully-outfitted management system for their individual network, or believe that they could better economize if it were possible to outsource this activity.

An organization tasked with managing networks for a plurality of disparate customers will face multiplied expenses, however, if it must provide a separate management infrastructure for each customer.

These are primarily low-level protocols that help get management jobs done, but do not address the issues involved in managing a plurality of disparate networks.

They have only limited capabilities for managing completely disparate networks.

However, the Solarwinds system uses stateless communications methods and is directed to monitoring rather than remote management of individual devices within the monitored networks.

However, the Jumpnode® appliances track network events locally and are therefore vulnerable to loss of connectivity and consequent data loss and security risks.

Moreover, each of the hardware appliances must have its own“Internet drop” (or other access point (such as a modem port) directly accessible from outside the local network) to make the requisite connections to the remote management facility, and the appliances rely on stateless communications and polling, which does not provide for real-time data acquisition.

However, these tools do not provide a way to communicate beyond the first level of a managed network without special arrangements, such as special credentials, VPN access, a special opening in a firewall, etc., or manual construction of sockets and tunnels, allowing deeper access.

They also do not provide a mechanism for reducing the enormous volume of data that might result from indiscriminately monitoring all events across a plurality of managed networks and systems, other than opting to view only one data source at a time.

In addition, centralized polling is often performed from a management network separate from end-user community networks, resulting in a lack of fidelity of that end-user's local perspective of the availability of polled resources.

However, such facilities are of limited utility for remote management.

However, externally managing networks through a NAT firewall is impractical, because one would have to configure the NAT to make each network element within the NAT accessible from outside.

Systems that have attempted to manage multiple networks have not satisfactorily dealt with a number of issues, including:Overlapping private address spaces among the managed networks.

Disparate networks may well utilize the same private address allocation, resulting in conflicts.

Existing workarounds have involved assigning different network schemas, which can be prohibitively inconvenient and expensive, particularly in light of the need to change the entire schema at once; attaching to one network at a time, through VPN or static routing, thus creating time gaps in monitoring or providing multiple management infrastructures at great duplication and expense.

However, such a system, while providing a monitoring capability, does not provide any means for a remote facility, external to the devices' local network, to address the devices individually in order to manage them.Need for special arrangements to access and manage processes and resources within each network.

No general method has existed for remotely managing network processes and resources without providing some “special” means of access, such as a VPN, a hole in a firewall or the like.

All of the prior approaches involve expense, inconvenience or security compromises that are unacceptable to many potential customers for network management services.Overwhelming amount of network event information.

Existing systems have not adequately dealt with the issue of how to limit the event information to what is relevant, without compromising the continuous ability to monitor relevant information.

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