In-Band Management

Devices are managed using protocols such as Telnet/SSH as part of in-band management. Identity-based access control is a commonly used method for enhancing security. It’s good practice to separate administrative traffic from production customer traffic. Create a management VLAN or loop back interface for other management tasks such as device monitoring, system logging, and SNMP. The following diagram shows in-band management.

Both in-band and out-of-band management traffic are mapped to the management plane. There are two main methods of network management:

• In-band network management
• Out-of-band management (OOB).

In-band management is performed by connecting to the router via Telnet/SSH or using SNMP-based tools. In-band management is the most common method of network management, allowing actual data/production and management traffic to use the same path to communicate with different network nodes. In-band network management is inadequate for large-scale or mission-critical networks. When the network goes down, it compromises the reachability of network devices and poses a significant risk to your business and its operations. Out-of-band management (OOB) provides an alternative or secondary access method to avoid problems or get to the root cause of problems.