Integrating Monitoring Systems - Pre-Study

Sammanfattning: Failures in networks that reside in business environments cause harm to organizations depending on them. Every minute of inoperativety is hurtful and as a network adminstrator you want to minimize the rates of failures as well as the time of inoperation. Therefore, a fruitful network monitoring system is of great interest for such organizations. This bachelor’s thesis is the outcome of a pre-study performed on behalf of MIC Nordic and sought to advice them in the implementation of a new monitoring system. The aim of this study was to investigate how a Network Operation Center (NOC) can be implemented in an existing monitoring environment, to integrate current monitoring systems to a central point for monitoring. This study takes an holitstic approach to network management and the research can be divided into two main categories: Communication between network components and Presentation of information. Our process involves an analysis of the environment of MIC Nordic and an in depth inquiry on the current state of network monitoring and interface design. The study then culminates in the implementation of a prototype. The prototype serves in first hand as a research tool to collect experience and empirical evidence to increase the crediblity of our conclusions. It is also an attempt of demonstrating the complete process behind developing a NOC, that we believe can fill a gap among the previous research in the field. From our results you can expect a prototype with functionality for monitoring network components and a graphical user interface (GUI) for displaying information. The results are designed towards solving the specific network management problem that was given and the environment that it concerns. This pre-study suggests that the best solution for implementing a NOC in the given environment is to use SNMP for communication. From an investigation on how to present network management information in a effective way we propose to follow a user-centered approach and to utilize human perception theory in the design process. The authors recommend further research that maintain the holistic approach but applies more quantitative methods to broaden the scope.