WiMax offers a rich feature set and flexibility, which also increases the complexity of service deployment and provisioning for fixed and mobile networks.

Let us take a look at the WiMax Management Information Base (MIB).

Figure 2: WiMax Management Information Base [Intel.Com]

The above figure shows the management reference model for BWA (Broadband Wireless Access ) networks. This consists of a Network Management System (NMS), some nodes, and a database. BS and SS managed nodes collect and store the managed objects in an 802.16 MIB format. Managed objects are made available to NMS' using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

When a customer subscribes to the WiMax service, the service provider asks the customer for the service flow information. This would include number of UL / DL connections with the data rates and QoS parameters. The customer also needs to tell the kind of applications that he proposes to run.

The service provider then proceeds to pre-provision the services and enters the information in the Service Flow Database.