Enhancing network management frameworks with SDN-like control

Traditional network management tools are too static and inflexible in today's enterprise and campus networks that have to support users with diversity of personal devices. Controller-based Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigms are gaining popularity because of their promise to reduce the complexity of managing networks by automating the complex process of translating policy definitions to network provisioning and dynamic control. Though this approach provides fine-grained control over end-to-end network flows, they lack mature management and control tools. We propose an integrated network management and control system (i-NMCS) framework that combines legacy network management functions such as discovery, fault detection with the end-to-end flow provisioning and control enabled by SDN. We believe that such hybrid control will be key for incremental deployment of SDN functionality on today's networks.