Editing Network element (section)

==Background==

With development of distributed networks, network management had become an annoyance for administration staff. It was hard to manage each device separately even if they were of the same vendor. Configuration overhead as well as misconfiguration possibility were quite high. A [[provisioning (telecommunications)|provisioning process]] for a basic service required complex configurations of numerous devices. 
It was also hard to store all network devices and connections in a plain list. Network structuring approach was a natural solution.