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WILIBOX Remote Configuration Management System
(RCMS) is a centralized monitoring and management solution for wireless network equipment based on the WILI
operating system. At the heart of RCMS is a powerful and efficient
engine that securely gathers, interprets and records information
from registered network devices, and makes that information
available to network administrators through a convenient,
secure, and attractive Web interface.
However, as the name implies, the most important feature
of RCMS is configuration management. RCMS can retrieve and/or
store configuration files from/to WILI based devices (that
are online and connected to the server) at any time, turning
management of large groups of devices from an administrative
nightmare into a single click operation. Remote firmware update
is part of the core functionality as well, so forget having
to individually update firmware on tens or hundreds of network
devices — just upload the new firmware image to the
RCMS server and schedule a group firmware update!
Configuration change logging ensures that administrators
can easily revert any registered device back to a known working
configuration in cases when a damaged or invalid configuration
is uploaded.
Registered devices can be conveniently grouped into a hierarchy
of named domains and subdomains, reflecting their geographical
distribution, hardware type, or any other criteria. RCMS server
can store common configurations for entire domains, with a
possibility of overriding individual settings on a per-subdomain
or per-device basis. This powerful configuration merging feature
greatly simplifies the process of managing large group of
wireless network devices, and reduces risk of human error.
Configurable automatic device registration and provisioning
enables administrators to define ranges of MAC addresses and
domains that unregistered devices will get automatically assigned
to once they connect to the server for the first time and
their MAC address falls into a corresponding range. In addition,
a preloaded configuration can be uploaded to an automatically
registered device during its first connection, enabling features
like plug'n'play operation, redirection to other RCMS servers
and many more.
Flexible and highly configurable device statistics collection and graphical
visualization will help administrators to inspect and monitor the state
of their networks more conveniently.
RCMS is a multiuser environment with configurable user access
permissions, so it's easy to have multiple administrators
managing different networks on the same server, without having
access to each other's equipment.
Best of all, the communication between managed devices and
the RCMS server is always initiated by an RCMS agent service
running on every WILI based device, meaning that RCMS will
work just fine with devices that are behind NAT routers, firewalls
etc., as long as the devices have outside connectivity.
The WILIBOX RCMS server is easy to install and deploy because
of its multiplatform nature and reliance on standard communication
protocols. Integration with third party de facto industry
standard network monitoring and management tools is one of
our near future plans.
Figure 1: WILIBOX RCMS Server
Architecture
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