Lucent automates network setup process

Lucent Technologies has introduced a new software product that should make it easier to configure and manage networks that use the Internet protocol (IP) to send data.

Lucent, whose federal clients have included the House of Representatives and the Navy, launched the product this week at the ComNet technology exposition in Washington, D.C.

The product, called Internet Protocol Network Configurator (IPNC), automates the process of configuring an IP network. It is supposed to reduce errors and cut the time managers spend configuring networks manually.

IPNC, which will be available at the end of the month, also takes "snapshots" of configuration files and stores them in a database. The snapshots should help network managers find problems and restore services if a network goes down, according to company officials.

IPNC runs on Sun Microsystems Inc. UltraSPARC servers and requires at least 150M of RAM and 200M of disk capacity.