HIERARCHICAL NETWORK MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OPERATING AS A PROXY AGENT FOR ENHANCING PROCESSING EFFICIENCY

In a network management system comprising a plurality of manager nodes and a proxy agent node for managing network resources, an efficient network management apparatus is provided for calculating a network load, automatically adjusting monitor traffic occurrence intervals in response to the load totalizing inquiries from the managers and preventing duplicate inquiry handling, and caching the inquiry result for suppressing access to the network resources. The management traffic occurrence frequency is automatically optimized in response to the network load and essential application communication performance is prevented from lowering for enhancing processing efficiency.