CORBA based Network Management

By : Sudha Mishra B. Tech. CSE 3rd year Network Management Systems - Research
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Brief Overview
What is Corba? Emergence of the Corba based management Corba as management technology. JIDM Standard approach for corba based management: GDMO/ASN.1 to IDL translation Corba/TMN gateway architecture Structure of Corba based network management technology Research1: architecture of corba based management performance of corba .

and

Benefits & problems of using Corba based management technology Improving Performance of CORBA Research2: Approach to improve the performance of Corba based management and find out the sources of the performance overhead

What is CORBA ?
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) A standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) It enables communication of software components written in multiple computer languages and running on multiple computers. Object Management Group (OMG) Object Management Group (OMG) is an international, open membership, non-profit computer industry standards consortium. Standardizes distributed object-oriented systems.
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Emergence of CORBA-based management

Object-oriented framework for developing distributed systems.

Satisfies concepts of ODP Object Distributed Processing.

Enhances the portability of applications that are developed across multiple network management platforms. Uses ORB for the interaction of the different objects over the network. ORB facilitates interoperability for communication among different object systems from different vendors.

ORB object Request Broker - a middleware piece of software that

allows to make program calls from one computer to another via network.
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CORBA as a Management Technology

Fully object-oriented approach for management information modeling.

Protocol IIOP - Internet Inter ORB Protocol

Integration of TMN and CORBA Managed objects are discovered by management applications using Naming Service provided by CORBA. Notification service event driven management Client-server based organization model.

Interfaces between managed object and manager specified by IDL (Interface definition language)
Several approaches OMG, NMF, X/Open, ISO/OSI, ITU-T etc. Most Important approach : JIDM Joint Inter-Domain Management
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JIDM Joint Inter Domain Management

Reuse of OSI-SM infrastructure for management

approach to accommodate existing networks and traditional management devices.

Including generic gateway between different management technologies. Translation of GDMO/ASN.1 to CORBA IDL is needed to implement the Gateway. CMIP/SNMP PDU In OSI architecture, MO description Data definition
conversion

CORBA IDL

Reverse conversion

GDMO ASN.1 IDL

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In Corba, Description of distributed objects

JIDM Scenarios

Corba Manager

IIOP

Gateway

CMIP/SNMP

CMIP/SNMP Agent

OSI Manager

CMIP

Gateway

IIOP

Corba Agent

Corba Manager

IIOP

Corba Agent

Corba Manager

IIOP

Gateway

CMIP

Gateway

IIOP

Corba Agent
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Corba Agent
Corba Agent has CORBA server and IDL interfaces for each GDMO. MOs are not structured in MIB , visible at the same level. Each NE has its own ORB to interact with other Management entities.

IDL interface of each MO defines attributes of MO and the operations supported. Interfaces are registered in the ORB Repository.
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Corba based Manager

Supports distributed deployment of the components. Uses OMG defined interfaces to interact with the corba based agent

The JIDM works can be divided into two main parts: Specification Translation and Interaction Translation.
Specification Translation describes translation algorithm between CORBA IDL and GDMO/ASN.1 Interaction translation describes the dynamic converting mechanisms between the protocols in one domain and the protocols within another domain.

Corba based NM environment

O R B Management Application

MO MO MO O R B

IIOP

Embedded agent

IIOP

O R B

GUI Client Application

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Corba/TMN Gateway Architecture

In OSI, management architecture, CMIS provide services for management operations (such as create, delete, get, set, action and event notification). CMIP transmission procedure of management information and the syntax of CMIS management services.

In CORBA, the object implementation component defines operations that implement a CORBA IDL interface.
When CORBA integrated into OSI management architecture then CORBA/CMIP gateway is needed for interaction of two inter-domain communication protocols and management operations. The gateway has OSI protocol stack for communicating with OSI-based TMN agent, and JIDM and OSI management gateway for supporting protocol conversion between CORBA and CMIP. These can support all processing of 11 CMIS primitives.

Design and Implementation of CORBA based Network Management Applications within TMN Framework from kyunpook national university(Ref [1] )

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Structure of Corba based Network Management Application

CORBA-based network management application performs general MO operations and management operations associated with SMFAs. First, management application establishes connections with gateway for MO using several CORBA common services, such as naming, lifecycle and trader services.

It performs CMIS operations using JIDM and OSI management gateway APIs provided by CORBA/CMIP gateway and MO Interface APIs provided by GDMO/ASN.1 to CORBA IDL translator. Using such MO operations and user-defined operations, SMFs may be composed and perform the management functions of functional areas. Management application provides user interface for supporting requests and responses of management behaviors. Upper layer management interface provides additional functionality which is necessary to the realization of TMN service management layer.

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Design and Implementation of CORBA based Network Management Applications within TMN Framework from kyunpook national university(Ref [2] )

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Design and Implementation of CORBA based Network Management Applications within TMN Framework from kyunpook national university(Ref [2] )

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Design and Implementation of CORBA based Network Management Applications within TMN Framework By Kyungpook National university(Ref[1])

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Analysis
Comparison of figure A with figure B :

The elapsed time difference of the operation execution on CORBA-based NMS with the other is lager than in figure B.
Single operation execution time is shorter than scoped operation execution time. In addition to this, execution time on CORBA-based NMS is slower than the others.

Hence a lot of overhead in Corba. Some overhead in time for the connection of CORBA-based management application with CORBA/CMIP gateway.
Therefore it may be necessary to find out the methods to minimize the 17 connection time for system performance improvement.

Problems with corba based Management technology

Not scalable and fault tolerant, if the standard approach is used. Scalability is the main issue.

It is not possible to handle so many objects efficiently using CORBA. The scalability of the system is almost impossible to achieve, because the run time requirements for the SNMP gateway servers and the naming service will grow linearly, when the number of managed SNMP agents grows.
For Network management systems technology has to support bulk information retrieval. But Corba does not support it. 18

Improving performance
caching mechanism - fast and efficient access to the values of attributes of a managed object in corba management application .

The caching mechanism enables CORBA Managed Object to maintain a local store of attribute values.
Thus eliminating the need to contact the real underlying managed object when this information is requested.
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Further Research to improve performance

Research paper : Improving the Performance of Distributed CORBA Applications : Proceedings of the International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS.02) 1530-2075/02 - 2002 IEEE (Ref [2])

This paper introduces new technique called CORBA as needed to improve the performance of distributed CORBA applications.

First checks whether the interoperability functionality of CORBA communication methods are indeed needed or not in a particular invocation. If not needed for that invocation, then basically bypasses corba.

Three design techniques : 1. service approach 2. Integration approach 3. wrapper approach

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Designs of alternative approaches

Bypass service : uses a similar interface as in CORBA, but uses TCP or UDP for communication.
Service approach
Services Bypass service

Integration approach

Wrapper approach
Wrapper

Services
ORB + Bypass service

Services ORB GIOP IIOP TCP

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ORB GIOP IIOP TCP

GIOP IIOP TCP

Best approach : wrapper

Best approach is : wrapper approach Problems with other approaches : Integration approach : 1. functionality of ORB are overloaded 2. Loss of portability & interoperability 3. Applications ORB dependent Service approach : 1. Not clear how ORB interface with bypass service 2. Performance overhead
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Further Research to improve performance

Wrapper approach : A separate module wrapper determining the platform compatibility & establishing connection . Wrapper : interposed between client/server & ORB. Client Initiates a connection with a server. The wrapper intercepts this invocation. invokes appropriate ORB methods to determine the server location and server platform. If server platform compatible with the client platform, the wrapper uses TCP or UDP to facilitate all the following method 23 invocations

Wrapper approach(Ref[2])
Client Server

Client-side wrapper
Server locator
Determine server platform
incompatible compatible

Server-side wrapper

corba

corba

Alternate connection

ORB(Logical channel) TCP/UDP(Logical channel)

Network

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Experiment evaluating performance

Custom middleware(CM) is used for wrapper implementation Corba middleware : ORB : Visi-Broker Implementation of both is similar. Both provides location transparency. Difference : Corba - heterogeneous distributed platform CM - homogeneous distributed platform Experiment done for three string lengths : 100B,500B,10KB

Over Three different networks : LAN, cross subnet, WAN

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Table : Application Performance (msec)

(Ref[2])
Network LAN Message size 100B 500B 10K 100B 500B 10K 100B 500B 10K CM(wrapper approach) 86.3 93.3 187.0 177.0 196.6 433.6 6042.3 6280.0 6685.3 Corba (ORB : visi broker) 140.6 177.3 260.0 220.3 247.0 921.3 6371.3 6443.6 7056.6

Cross Subnet

WAN

CM outperforms the application implementation in Visibroker by 38% over LAN, 31% over cross subnet, and 5% over WAN. Reason for performance improvement: Data mapping, byte stuffing, and other interoperability functions to address the interoperability issue needed by the Visibroker.
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Sources of performance overhead

To find out the sources of performance overhead , Installed a network sniffer on the network to examine packets sent by visibroker.
Three important interoperability issues: 1. variable byte ordering - no extra overhead 2. byte alignment of primitive types - no significant overhead 3. complete OMG IDL mapping to language data types - significant source of overhead

IDL mapping : The parameter marshalling/unmarshalling . (encoding/decoding of parameters & putting it onto the network) During a remote invocation, the string parameter is marshalled from the language string type to the IDL string type . Similarly, on receiving the result, the IDL String type is unmarshalled to the language data type. Similar parameter marshalling / unmarshalling takes place on the server side. They did the experiment for several IDL language data types . They found that this overhead is incurred for all the types.

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Conclusion
Corba facilitates interoperability over distributed network, but it incurs performance overhead that can be reduced by using corba as needed:wrapper approach by research paper[2]. The main source of performance overhead due to interoperability functionality in CORBA is parameter marshalling and unmarshalling needed in remote method invocation.
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References
[1] Design and Implementation of CORBA based Network Management Applications within TMN Framework By Moon- Sang Jeong , Jeong-Hwan Kim, Joon-Hyub Kwon and Jong-Tae Park - School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering , Kyungpook National University [2] Improving the Performance of Distributed CORBA Applications : Proceedings of the International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS.02) 1530-2075/02 - 2002 IEEE [3] Network Management : Principles & Practices(2nd addition) by Mani subrimanian.

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