Holistic Operations Planning System (HOPS)

The open-source network management software ecosystem is currently a collection of loosely-related projects with poor support for long term planning and high-level network information. Network planners have few free tools to help them balance the many variables in potential network expansions (including cost, performance, and energy usage), and few free tools to communicate these plans with managers and other stakeholders. Most free network monitoring tools operate on a fairly low level, and require complex configuration. Network operators have limited economical options for generating high-level graphical views of their networks based on this low-level data. The Holistic Operations Planning System (HOPS) is an open-source tool that integrates with the existing low-level tools to create high-level reports and support new planning tools. Acceleration will use its own nationwide network infrastructure and clients as a test bed for data gathering from low-level tools, specifically Nagios (https://www.nagios.org) and Cacti (http://www.cacti.net/). The system included automation and step-by-step instructions for confiruing these lower-level network tools. The planning system allows multiple potential network expansions, with capacity estimates based on low-level data. HOPS produces side-by-side comparisons of these plans to summarize the options for managers and decision makers. Commercial Application and Other Benefits: Network plans developed in HOPS may be shared between organizations, allowing different operators to learn from each others experience. High-level historical data about a network informs network consolidations when organizations merge, letting operators make better decisions on how to combine two different networks. The planning tools enable network operators to easily evaluate and rank their options and ultimately create faster, cheaper networks to support the growing bandwidth needs of consumers.