Understanding the Network: A Practical Guide to Internetworking

Network Management Fundamentals

Before computer networks emerged, there were mainframe time-sharing systems. These systems were standalone supercomputers that shared memory, processing, and storage resources between a certain number of users. Users would access the mainframe through dumb terminals that were connected to the server via serial controllers or modems. This computing model is still used today with some UNIX systems and client/server computing. But, large mainframe time-sharing systems required more attention and management than most UNIX systems today. Mainframe management was performed by systems administrators. These administrators would monitor the mainframe's processor and memory utilization, I/O controllers, line terminals and ...