An Integrated Network Management System for Multi-Vendor Power Line Communication Networks

Power Line Communication (PLC) is an evolving communication network technology using pre-installed power lines, which provides the electricity to the household or the building, in order to provide services such as Internet access, Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) and home networking. As PLC networks and their applications grow with the advances in PLC technologies, one needs to efficiently manage the resources of PLC networks. Currently, major PLC chipset and modem vendors are trying to provide network management capabilities in their devices by defining their own private Management Information Base (MIB). However, it is insufficient to manage PLC networks comprised of multi-vendor PLC devices using a proprietary MIB. This paper presents the work on integrated network management of multi-vendor PLC networks.