ion base and SNMP MIBs are also discussed briefly in this chapter. The MIB is a vast topic and there is much to be included to give a detailed understanding of MIB. There are books dedicated to understanding MIBs, to the extent that some books only detail a specific MIB group in the tree. The concept of information handling was handled in Chapter 15 to give a strong base before giving an overview of MIB. For professionals implementing a specific MIB, it is suggested to refer to the books sug- gested under this next section and also the relevant RFC. Additional Reading 1. Alexander Clemm. Network Management Fundamentals. Indianapolis, IN: Cisco Press, 2006. 2. Larry Walsh. SNMP MIB Handbook. England: Wyndham Press, 2008. Stephen B. Morris. Network Management, MIBs and MPLS: Principles, Design and Implementation. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR, 2003. 4. M. T. Rose. The Simple Book. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. Chapter 17 Next Generation Network Management (NGNM) Networks are evolving rapidly to meet current demands of unification and conver- gence. This new holistic view of the network also requires significant change in the management of the network. Many standardizing bodies are working in this regard for coming up with the requirements for Next Generation Network Management (NGNM). This chapter is intended to give the reader an overview of NGNM. Some of the most popular documents on NGNM, M.3060 from ITU-T, and TR133 from TMF are discussed to provide information on the direction in which standards are being defined for managing next generation networks (NGN). 17.1 Introduction Current network management solutions are targeted at a variety of independent networks. The wide spread popularity of IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) was a clear indication that all of the independent networks will be integrated into a single IP-based infrastructure referred to as next generation networks (NGN). The ser- vices, network architectures, and traffic patterns in NGN will dramatically differ from the cur