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Assessment of Network Configuration Management and
Data Stewardship in the Indonesian Boarding School
Muharman Lubis*1 [0000-0003-2973-9215], Abdul Azies Muslim1 and Arif Ridho Lubis2 [0000-
0001-8855-1277]
1Telkom University, Jl. Telekomunikasi, 40257, Indonesia
2Politeknik Negeri Medan, Jl. Almamater, 20155, Indonesia
*muharmanlubis@telkomuniversity.ac.id
Abstract. In recent years, an increasing understanding of software development
as a set of interconnected processes has affected configuration management
(CM). The purpose of CM is to understand network behavior by taking an in-
ventory of users and network devices, bandwidth usage and analyzing this data
to provide information on current usage patterns. Usage quotas can be set for
individual users or groups, whose optimal access points can be reached after
several iterations and some fixes, which data stewardship (DS) come into the
picture to maintain high-quality data in a consistent and accessible way. When
achieved, the continuous measurement produces information related to the bill-
ing process and assessment of the fair and optimal use of resources within the
network system should be conducted. Hence, this study wants to explore the is-
sue that has been challenged primarily by the high school in maintaining the
configuration process of the network in the laboratory for teaching and learning
by assessing the implementation with set of CM and DS criterion.
Keywords: Configuration, Stewardship, Assessment, Quality, Strategy.
1 Introduction
A network management system (NMS) refers to a group of applications that allow the
administrator to monitor and control network components. Due to the variety of man-
aged items such as routers, bridges, switches, hubs, etc., and the wide variety of oper-
ating systems and programming interfaces, the management protocol is crucial for the
central to communicate with administration agents for an effective and efficient pro-
cess. In general, it is a service that uses various protocols, tools, applications, and
devices to help network administrators manage appropriate network resources in a
way that can be managed, either hardware or software, to satisfy the network service
needs and objectives. Through the configuration management (CM) function, some
advantages can take remote control of network devices by tracking device configura-
tion information. It will identify the impact of different hardware and software ver-
sions on the available operation everywhere and every time. All CM information is
stored in the database for easy access, such as the operating system, the Ethernet in-
terface type, version, the TCP/IP stack, and the SNMP version. When a problem oc-
curs, CM can search the configuration database for information or clues that can help
solve the problem, such as the operational status of the interface and forwarding in-
formation from the routing table, configured in a specific way. When performance
2
becomes unacceptable, the system reacts by sending a message. Thus, this study
wants to explore the practical issues that arise when specific organizations in this case
higher education to implement CM and DS properly by assessing their business pro-
cess and standard operational.
2 Literature Review
CM is the processes and instruments that enhance network steadiness, track network
changes, and provide current network visibility and documentation [1]. By creating
and maintaining CMs with the best practices, several benefits are expected, such as
better network availability and cheaper costs, including decreased support costs due to
reduced interactive support problems. Reduced network costs due to user, electrical,
and device circuit tracking tools and processes that identify unused network compo-
nents [2-4]. The changes are made on a single host by locally modifying system
configuration files, calling specific commands, and installing or configuring different
applications. By configuring the network devices, it can create detailed
documentation on how to configure a particular service and the more systems to have,
which provide the repeatable and similar steps to guide the technician to update the
software, or rebuild them when they inevitably fail [2]. In addition, the successful
business process can significantly improve an organization's business practices, and
can indeed provide a fundamental increase in business operations [5-10]. However, to
do so, many important success factors need to be considered when conducting CM,
including the status and quality of employees conducting activities, and tools to
monitor and evaluate performance [11-14].
The proper reward and punishment strategies are critical and important to maintain
the network administrator results based on the organization's goals [15]. It can be
summarized the cycle as the configuration identification, control, accounting, and
reviewed audits through several rules such as the CM must manage information
ownership and control work products in a timely manner [16-18]. The early
identification and control of artifacts and work products are an integral part of the
project and should be simple, consistent with the project culture and requirements,
and supported by the project methods and tools [19-21]. Meanwhile, data centers are
evolving and leveraging available technologies to improve the ability to manage and
access data retention [22]. This is where the serious problem arises. Inadequate data
management can result in loss of critical data, unverifiable results, and wasted money.
Over the next few years, thousands of qualified data hosts will be required to address
these issues [23]. The main challenge is not only the amount of data, but also the
variety of formats and types. Other key challenges are data architecture and data on
the go, such as sending data over a network [24]. Data stewardship includes all
activities to maintain and improve information content, accessibility, and usability of
data and metadata [25]. Therefore, data stewardship practitioners, especially those in
data warehouses, data service centers, or related to data stewardship programs, can
benefit from their knowledge of existing maturity assessment models.
3
By using self-assessment tools, data managers can define a roadmap for future
development and improvement, and some recommended data stewards practices are
necessary to be adopted when comparing data processes with other data providers
[26]. It can also provide best practices and social standards to generate the specific
benefits to be taken by presenting a unified framework for assessing the management
of scientific data. Then, it can creates a stewardship maturity scoreboard for the
dataset to improve stewardship of scientific data and provide users and stakeholders
in supporting decision making with quality information and ease of use of data [27].
Ensuring and improving quality and ease of use is vital part of scientific monitoring
of digital environmental data products, but the role of the person responsible for
managing quality has been evolved over time and is not always well defined [28].
This is an important part of the long-term storage and use or reuse of digital research
data with the reliability of data of products and services must be monitored in regular
manner [29]. Therefore, assessing the maturity status of the current management of
datasets is also important part of ensuring and improving the way datasets are
documented, stored, managed, and distributed to the relevant stakeholders [30].
3 Network Topology
Fig. 1. Network Topology
This research used on-site observation to obtain a whole picture of the network topol-
ogy in the Boarding School area, which became the sample for the case study of CM
and DS. The network devices include ISP routers from Indihome (ISP 1) and Remala
(ISP 2), bandwidth management router, switches, access points, and WiFi-routers. It
4
starts from the central office building, then flows to the school building separated by
three areas with one switch on each side, those switches connected to the end devices
like a personal computer (PC) and access points used by four computer laboratories,
administration office, and teacher offices. ISP 1 router is not connected to the central
office building, but it directly connects the ISP to the Junior and Senior High School
office (SMP and SMA) in the school building. The next building is a TV Studio lo-
cated behind campus. One switch is connected to 7 PCs and 2 ISP wifi-router to sup-
port TV Studio activities. Next to the studio, there is a dormitory office which one
switch and wifi-router located. Fig. 1 below explains the detail of network topology
for the location of network devices for further analysis while Fig. 2 presents the loca-
tion of building.
Further from those buildings before, there are Radio Station and Inn that located
side by side. Switch, 3 PCs, and WiFi-router are located in the radio station while in
the Inn, only WiFi-router directly connected to the central office is located. The net-
work topology is the arrangement of elements (links, nodes, etc.) of a communica-
tions network. Network topology can be used to define or describe the layout of vari-
ous types of communication networks, including radio command and control net-
works, industrial field carriers, and computer networks. Some of the advantages of
implementing a network topology are adequate network performance, higher network
performance, lower operating, implementation, maintenance costs, fault or failure
detection, and efficient use of resources. The Table 1. Provides the list of network
devices while Table 2 present the subnet distribution of each them.
Fig. 2. Network Topology Buildings
Table 1. List Network Devices
Devices
Brands
Router
Mikrotik RB2011L
Switch
TP-Link TL-SG1024DE
Access Point
UniFi UAP-LR
Table 2. Subnets Distribution
Subnet Name
Host
Prefix
IP Prefix
First IP
Last IP
IP Broadcast
Kampus
150
/24
192.168.1.0
192.168.1.1
192.168.1.254
192.168.1.255
Inn
100
/25
192.168.2.0
192.168.2.1
192.168.2.126
192.168.2.127
Pusat
50
/25
192.168.2.128
192.168.2.129
192.168.2.254
192.168.2.255
Pengasuhan
30
/26
192.168.3.0
192.168.3.1
192.168.3.62
192.168.3.63
StudioTV
20
/26
192.168.3.64
192.168.3.65
192.168.3.126
192.168.3.127
Radio
10
/26
192.168.3.128
192.168.3.129
192.168.3.190
192.168.3.191
5
4 Data Stewardship Maturity Result
Fig. 3. Data Stewardship Maturity Results
The matrix-based data stewardship maturity assessment model serves as a guide to
users regarding the rigor of data stewardship practices, as well as to monitor and im-
prove aspects of an organization's performance in production, management, or service
climate data. It can also be used as a tool, which is usually represented as a two-
dimensional matrix. Based on the assessment using the Data Stewardship Maturity
Matrix against Boarding School, it can be seen that the highest level regarding the
implementation of stewardship data is at the minimum level for preservability and
usability. As for accessibility, production sustainability, data quality assurance, data
quality control/monitoring, data quality assessment, transparency/traceability, and
data integrity at the ad hoc level, indicating the low application of stewardship data
management. In this case, the result show mostly have positioned in the first stage for
every respected criteria, which preservability and usability went higher to second
stages as the technician have documented the activity log as well protect the network
system with authentication system based on user privileges. It is a functional role in
data management and governance and is responsible for ensuring that data policies
and standards are enforced within the administrator. Thus, data hosts help organiza-
tions get the most out of their domain data assets.
5 Configuration Assessment Result
CM should be a single and unique report on the identification, controlled storage,
change control, and status of selected intermediate work products, product compo-
nents, and products over the system's life. All areas actively participate in the man-
agement of metadata settings for placed objects, a database concept that means data
about the data stored in the database. The metadata for a configuration object can
include its name, the person who produced the item, the production date, and other
related configuration items. A configuration item can exist without change control
information, but cannot exist without metadata. Based on the table above, three
practices should improve DHCP ranges, downtime simulation, and standard modular
network solution. Being able to take full advantage of CM requires, unsurprisingly, an
initial learning curve, as well as careful study of how to organize and classify your
data and the maintenance of physical assets. System administrators tend to be very
hands-on and will likely start setting up a new service by installing the required
6
software to evaluate, tune, change, and adapt it to the environment's needs and
thereby terminate the server's functionality. Suppose this type of process has been
documented to allow the replication in the future or perhaps automate it completely.
In that case, it is imperative to keep track of the decisions made along with the phase
by identifying the changes made to the program and its configuration files and record
all of them repeatable.
Table 3. Configuration Process Assessment
No
Process
Description
Existing Configuration
Imple-
mented
Not Imple-
mented
1.
Software
Version
Control
The practice of implementing consistent software versions on
similar network devices. This improves the possibility of
validation and testing on selected software versions and
significantly reduces the number of software defects and
interoperability problems present on the network.
√
2.
IP address
management
The process of assigning, recycling, and documenting IP
addresses and subnets on a network. The IP addressing crite-
ria define the subnet size, subnet assignment, network hard-
ware assignments, and dynamic address assignments within
the subnet range.
√
3.
Naming
Conventions
The practice of implementing naming conventions for net-
work management helps create a consistent access point to
routers for all device-related network management infor-
mation, reducing the possibility of duplicate IP addresses,
creating simple identification of devices, and improves inven-
tory management
√
4.
DNS/DHCP
Assignments
The practice of identifying DHCP ranges and adding them to
the DNS, including the users' location.
√
5.
Standard
Configura-
tion
The practice of applying standard configuration to the proto-
col, media configurations, and global configuration com-
mands for each device classification to maintain network
consistency.
√
6.
Descriptors
The practice of creating a standard format that applies to each
interface. The descriptor includes the interface's purpose and
location, other devices or locations connected to the interface,
and circuit identifiers. This allows faster resolution of prob-
lems related to an interface.
√
7.
Configura-
tion Upgrade
Procedures
The practice of ensuring that software and hardware upgrades
occur smoothly with minimal downtime. Upgrade procedures
include vendor verification, vendor installation references
such as release notes, upgrade methodologies or steps, con-
figuration guidelines, and testing requirements.
√
8.
Solution
Templates
The practice of defining standard modular network solutions
helps ensure that similar deployments can be carried out in
the same way.
√
The aspects of CM has high correlation to the human resource such as skill, train-
ing, communication, motivation and appreciation systems, which organization also
need to consider before changes occurred in the whole work pattern. The idea related
to the adaptation processes interconnected with the interrelated activities in generating
the competitive and added value to the customers. Many steps can improve CM, such
as avoiding configuration errors by analyzing configuration changes before applying
them. They are, verifying the configurations against company policies and external
standards such as PCI, HIPAA, and ITIL. Reduce the room for manual errors by
7
standardizing and standardizing multi-vendor device management to simplify the
deployment of standard configurations across multiple devices, after the change
approval process and the implementation of user roles to restrict access to make
configuration changes. Establish and maintain instrument baselines in the critical
hardware network. Finally, find out what devices are running on your network and
remove any unused devices.
6 Conclusion
Implementing configuration management based on best practices can significantly
impact a network's quality, such as better network availability and cheaper costs, in-
cluding decreased support costs due to reduced interactive support problems. Using
configuration management best practices released by Cisco network management, a
network configuration management assessment was carried out on the Boarding
School in Indonesia as a study case. This research was conducted through on-site
observations to obtain a whole picture of the network topology and then carried out an
assessment using the best practice. This assessment shows that three practices have
not been implemented, i.e., DNS / DHCP Assignments, Configuration Upgrade Pro-
cedures, and Solution Templates. Based on this assessment results, it is hoped that
Boarding School can improve the implementation of its network management so that
it has a positive impact on the overall condition of the network.
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