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A Network Management System (NMS) is an application or set of applications that lets network engineers manage a network's independent components inside a bigger network management framework and performs several key functions. An NMS identifies, configures, monitors, updates and troubleshoots network devices – both wired and wireless – in an enterprise network. A system management control application then displays the performance data collected from each network component, allowing network engineers to make changes as needed.

Network element vendors make their performance data available to NMS software either through APIs or through a Protocol such as RFC7011 - IP Protocol Specification (IPFIX) or NetFlow, a de facto industry standard originally developed by Cisco that allows NetFlow-enabled Router to transmit traffic and performance information.

Source: https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/definition/network-management-system