Compunications Network Management

摘要

How growing competition will influence the effectiveness and efficiency of compunications facilities or services is a controversial matter of some importance to both clients and suppliers of these facilities or services. Network management is one focus of controversy. To caricature one extreme position on network management, only AT&T's leadership and dominance are up to doing it right. To caricature the other extreme, the invisible hand in an unfettered competitive market can do it better. In order to formulate policy in this area five basic questions must be considered: manage what, why, how, to what extent, and at what cost. In this paper, the author addresses the questions what and why in the belief that better understanding and perhaps agreement on these points can shed some light on how and how much to manage.