There is a need for improved collaboration between and within groups of network operators and users. At present, a variety of tools exist to share network health and status between domains, reserve resources across multiple networks, and remotely access computing and storage resources. However, no unified environment exists that combines these tools into a single, easy-to-use framework. Furthermore, these tools offer limited collaboration features, mostly relying on traditional methods such as email and mailing lists in order to coordinate and troubleshoot. This project will develop a Web 2.0-based Federated Network Management Environment (FNME) ¿ an open-source framework that will integrate network monitoring and measurement tools, resource reservation tools, and network applications with advanced Web 2.0 collaboration tools. Web 2.0 features ¿ such as forums, profiles, wikis, blogs, ticket tracking, RSS feeds, and instant messaging ¿ will be incorporated into the framework in order to foster community collaboration and information sharing. Finally, the framework will incorporate authentication mechanisms to credentialed users and operators, even across network domains. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee A framework for community collaboration that integrates commonly used network services and applications should enable users to more effectively take advantage of existing network resources and troubleshoot problems. Operators from different networks would be able to assist one another when dealing with network-boundary or cross-network issues.
