Restrictions on management protocols for distributed version control of LAN configurations

Ever-increasing scales of corporate networks configured as independently co ntrolled sections having equal authority make it more and more difficult to maintain conformity of the configuration. The authors investigated methods of efficient implementation of network configuration modifications underta ken in large-scale networks by managing the network configuration versions using distributed database storing the configurational information for all management domains. In this article, we propose an inter-agent protocol nec essary for consistent operation of the entire network consisting of domains managed by a management agent and identify conditions necessary for its im plementation. We also provide data concerning the upper limits of the recov ery time in the event of a failure as a result of network configuration man agement and propose an algorithm showing that the upper limits of the failu re recovery time increase linearly with an increase in the network scale. ( C) 2000 Scripta Technica.