The OSEK standard also cover a standardization of basic and non-competitive infrastructure between the various embedded systems that can be present in a vehicle. In fact, very often electronic control units made by different manufacturers are networked within vehicles by serial data communication links.
For that reason the standard propose a Network Management system (OSEK NM) that provides standardised features which ensure the functionality of inter-networking by standardised interfaces.
The essential task of NM is to ensure the safety and the reliability of a communication network. This is obtained implementing access restriction to each node (access must be restricted only from authorized entities), keeping the whole network tolerant to faults, and implementing diagnostic features capable of monitoring the status of the network in an indirect (monitoring application messages) or in a direct way (monitoring by dedicated NM communication using token principle).
Moreover, the network management also cover the initialization of network resources, network configuration the co-ordination of global operation modes (e.g. network wide sleep mode), and a support for diagnosis.