The SLM is the link between the clients and the IT-Unit. SLA's are used to define a service and its quality. The IT-Unit has to keep the quality that is defined in the SLA, otherwise they have to pay a predefined fine. The Networkmanagement offers the possibility to measure the quality of the defined services. According to OSI the Networkmanagement is divided into Fault-Management, Configuration-Management, Accounting, Performance-Management and Security-Management (FCAPS).

By means of SNMP, data (MIB-Variables) are exchanged between Networkmanagement Systems and Agents, which are running on each manageable node in a Network. Till yet just the SNMP version 1, which has got some dangerous security problems, is an accepted standard. At the moment there aren't any new secure standards and they are still working on SNMP version 3, which provides new security.

SMI "Structure of Management Information" is the basic of the "Management Information Base" MIB, which is a hierarchical structure to organise all manageable objects. SMI is using ASN.1 (Abstract Notation one) and BER (Basic Encoding Rules). Remote Monitoring RMON provides the possibility to analyse the traffic on a network in detail.

Networkmanagement is moving towards "web based management". Swisscom already realised a fully web based Networkmanagement tool that is based on SNMP, SQL and MRTG (Multi Route Traffic Grapher).

With the help of surveys and a visit at Migros and Swisscom a link is established to the practise of Networkmanagement. The investments into Networkmanagement are between 0 and 200'000 SFr and it is realized in every enterprise in a different way. All enterprises are using a mix of different Networkmanagement tools according to their requirements. Unfortunately it doesn't exist a perfect Networkmanagement tool.