| Network management systems for commercial communications networks typically include fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management(i.e., FCAPS) with a GUI-based interface to allow the configuration of network resources and the monitoring of network status.For future Airborne Communications Networks (AN), a considerably more sophisticated and complex set of management capabilities are needed. Key elements of an integrated enterprise management system to support net-centric operations includes:
• Mission Planning Element tightly coupled with FCAPS - The Mission Planning Element generates the configuration dataset to allocate and configure network resources and for monitoring network status.
? Security management of the airborne network infrastructure must support Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS).
• Policy-Based Management - Policy-based management is applied to specific aspects of network management, for example Quality of Service, network routing, and network security
• Predictive Link Management - Predictive Link Management manages links by attempting to pre-determine link outages before they occur and switch communicating network nodes to other available links.
• Situational Awareness and Common Operational Picture - The collection and dissemination of situational awareness (SA) data is required to derive a Common Operational Picture (COP) of the theatre of operations.
• Information Dissemination Management - An efficient method of data dissemination is needed to ensure that the data is accessible and available to any war-fighter who requires it .
• Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) - SOAs allow an efficient approach where a common set of services may be distributed across many elements in an enterprise network., providing interfaces to a network management system.
These elements of an enterprise network management system for airborne networking must be integrated in an efficient manner to interoperate with each other. Additionally, the network management systems will likely be hierarchical and distributed across the theatre and can ultimately be used to manage ground networks and SATCOM networks as well as airborne networks. This paper describes a candidate approach for such an integrated enterprise network management system.
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