Network Device

Concept

A Network Device is a data object for a node on a network graph of a specific network segment. Think of the Network Device object as a container for real world information - hardware, location, contact, etc. The Network Device positions this information set within the network graph

Network Graph

Displayed below is a portion of the network graph for the Wilkes Barre segment. This network graph was generated by the Nagios monitoring tool.

Figure 1: Network Device Graph

This graph shows the IP packet flow within the network. Core devices - gateway (wbgw) and router (wbsw), base station devices (wb-bs-secd) and subscriber devices (sub-guyette, sub-rhman, etc) are all presented in relationship to each other.

Our focus will be on a specific active network device (sub-rhman).

Attributes of a Network Node

A network node has real world attributes such as location, contact, subscriber, active hardware serial number, routing configuration, etc .

Figure 2: Attributs of a Network Device

These attributes are dynamic. For example, the hardware will change with a base station failure but all other attributes of the network node remain constant. Or, only some of the attribute may be know at a point in time. For example, with a new subscriber the location, contact, configuration (serviced by what base station) will be known. Specifics about the hardware and any special notes will not be known until installation.

Network Device Viewed from SDB

The Network Device is the information container for real world attributes associated with a network node. Information can be added to this container as it become available and modified as it changes.

Presented below is a screenshot of the Network Device information container for the sub-rhman network node.

Figure 3: Subscriber Overview Screen