RFC 3052 (rfc3052) - Page 1 of 12

Service Management Architectures Issues and Review

Network Working Group                                            M. Eder
Request for Comments: 3052                                         Nokia
Category: Informational                                           S. Nag
                                                            January 2001


          Service Management Architectures Issues and Review

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   Many of the support functions necessary to exploit the mechanisms by
   which differing levels of service can be provided are limited in
   scope and a complete framework is non-existent.  Various efforts at
   such a framework have received a great deal of attention and
   represent a historical shift in scope for many of the organizations
   looking to address this problem.  The purpose of this document is to
   explore the problems of defining a Service management framework and
   to examine some of the issues that still need to be resolved.

1. Introduction

   Efforts to provide mechanisms to distinguish the priority given to
   one set of packets, or flows, relative to another are well underway
   and in many modern IP networks, best effort service will be just one
   of the many services being offered by the network as opposed to it
   being the only service provided.  Unfortunately, many of the support
   functions necessary to exploit the mechanisms by which network level
   service can be provided are limited in scope and a complete framework
   is non-existent.  Compounding the problem is the varied understanding
   of exactly what the scope of "service" is in an IP network.  IP, in
   contrast to connection oriented network technologies, will not be
   able to limit the definition of service management simply to end to
   end connectivity, but will combine service management with regards to
   transport with the service requirements of the actual applications
   and how they are using the network.  The phenomenal growth in data
   networks as well as the growth in application bandwidth usage has had
   the consequence that the existing methods of management are not
   sufficient to handle the growing demands of scale and complexity.



Eder & Nag                   Informational