INMS (actually a family of products) is an umbrella network management system developed by Siemens for the management of heterogeneous networks. It integrates various network technologies and provides the user with a uniform global view, which can encompass either the entire network or a part of it as defined by the network administrator.
The design of the INMS system takes into account the growing complexity and heterogeneity of corporate and carrier networks. In its current version, it supports a large number of different networking technologies, types of network elements, and network services. The spectrum of supported network scenarios ranges from LAN, MAN, and WAN architectures through to voice transmission networks.
In order to understand the motivation behind the design of the INMS family of products, it is important to have some knowledge of today's networking landscape. Corporate networks are made up of subnetworks with different architectures managed by different element management systems. Since element managers are designed for subnetwork-specific management tasks, they cannot cooperate with the management systems of other subnetworks. In general, they use different management protocols and different information models, and operate on different management platforms. To enable communication throughout the entire network, the management activities of the subnetworks must be coordinated and the subnetwork-specific management information must be correlated.
INMS integrates the configuration, status, and performance information of the element management systems in homogeneous networks and combines it into a uniform, superordinate network management system using a standardized network management protocol (SNMPv1), a global network model, and a common user interface.
Because it uses a global network model, INMS is open to the integration of new technologies. Moreover, since the definition of the INMS data model is protocol-independent, it is not limited to SNMP and can, if required, be upgraded to a bilingual SNMP/CMIP version.
INMS is based on a standard management platform, HP OpenView Network Node Manager, and is currently available for SUN Solaris and Windows NT Workstations. Its graphical user interface is based on UNIX/Motif and the HP OpenView mamagement platform.