Simplifying Network Administration Using Policy Based Management

The management of network infrastructure in an enterprise is a complex and daunting affair. In an era of increasing technical complexity, it is becoming difficult to find trained personnel that can manage the new features that are introduced into the various servers, routers and switches. Policy based network management provides a means by which the administration process can be simplified and largely automated. This paper looks at a general policy based architecture that can be used to simplify several new technologies emerging in context of IP networks. The paper explains how network administration can be simplified by defining two levels of policies, a business level and a technology level.