A Common Ontology-Based Intelligent Configuration Management Model for IP Network Devices

As the Internet continues to grow, the tasks of configuration management for IP network devices are becoming more and more difficult. Over the past few years, much effort has been given to improve the deficiency of SNMP in the configuration management scope, but only few have succeeded to be standardized, the famous one of which is Netconf, developed by the IETF. Even the Netconf is still far from its aim to implement the automation of the network configuration. These days, ontology has become a promising technology and it seems that it may be used in the intelligent configuration management scope. This paper first discusses the application of ontology and three related languages (including OWL, SWRL and OWL-S) to intelligentize configuration management. A common ontology-based intelligent configuration management model for IP network devices is then presented in the paper. To check the feasibility of this model, the paper also provides a possible scenario.