 different ways. The user of an NMS application can use a menu in the application to spec- ify the elements that need to be managed as an IP address or a range of addresses like "X.X.X.100" to "X.X.X.201." The set of servers to be man- aged may also be taken from a domain server that has an IP address of all the elements in the network. Auto discovery is also a common feature in most NMS systems where the NMS automatically identifies all the elements in a particular network. Discovery of components that make up the element: Each network element will be made of hardware components that perform a specific functionality and needs to be discovered. For example a call agent will have a set of links and these will be plugged into link interface cards on the call agent. Fault What Is NMS? logs will be generated with information on the component associated to the fault condition. Download of fault data: This activity usually happens after the resource (ele- ment and its components) discovery, SO that the fault data can be associated to the element and its specific component. The discovered resources are rep- resented as a tree in most NMS applications and associating the logs to the specific resource helps in debugging at the resource level. Download of performance data: Unlike fault logs, which are usually send to the NMS as and when they occur, the performance data is usually dumped into files on the network element. These performance records are collected from the network element at regular intervals by the NMS, the data is then parsed and formatted for final display or processing input for other modules. Authentication of user: The user of the NMS needs to be authenticated to prevent unauthorized use of the network management application. Maintenance commands that can bring down key elements in the network can be performed from the NMS, which leads to high levels of security implemented at the NMS. There are a set of user groups and each user is assigned to the user group. Each group or user has a set of privileges w