A Pratical Approach for Automatic Generation of Network Segment Traffic Baselines

Abstract

This paper presents a model for automatic generation of a baseline which characterizes the traffic of network segments. The use of the baseline concept allows the manager to: identify limitations and crucial points of the network: learn about the actual status of use of the network resources: be able to gain better control of the use of network resources and to establish thresholds for the generation of more accurate and intelligent alarms, better suited to the actual characteristics of the network. Also presented is an alarm system that relies on the baseline and that provides the automation of a task that can be performed manually by the network manager, based on his empirical knowledge of the network. A tool known as GBA was used for the development, implementation and testing of these functions. Moreover, some results obtained with the practical use of the baseline as well as of the alaml system in the management of network segments, are also presented. The results obtained validate the experiment and show, in practice, significant advantages in their use for network management.