Real-Time Telecom Management Integrated With AM/FM

Real-Time Telecom Management Integrated With AM/FM

Robert W. Kirby
NMS Americas Inc.
145 Renfrew Drive, Unit 140A
Markham, Ontario
Canada L3R 9R6

Introduction
With a worldwide trend toward deregulation and privatization, there are continually new entrants to the telecommunications industry. In this increasingly competitive environment, telecommunications operators must live or die as much by the quality of their services as by their cost competitiveness. Therefore, the quality of their real-time network management cystems becomes all-important. Note that a customer lost to a competitor due to price competition can usual] y be won back at a later date On the other hand a customer lost for reasons of poor set-vice may be lost forever. This is particular y true of the larger, more lucrative corporate customers whose financial loses from disrupted or unreliable telecommunications service may be many times larger than their total telecommunications bill.

To remain competitive an operator needs to take maximum advantage from the capital investments in its network. This is only possible with enterprise-wide access to complete and comprehensible knowledge of the network. infrastructure.

New technologies continue to push-intelligence further and further out in the local loop, thus increasing the level of network management complexity. The boundaries between network engineering and real-time management are becoming more and more blurred. Although AM/FM and real-time management systems have usual] y operated independently of each other to date, the overlap of their domains is demanding a higher level of interaction.

What is Network Management?
Network Management includes a wide range of management functions related to the real-time behavior of a telecommunications network. Under the TMN (Telecommunications Management Network) standard the common management functions are broadly grouped as:

Configuration Management to control, identify, collect data from, and provide data to Network Elements;
Fault Management to detect, isolate, and correct abnormal operations;
Performance Management to evaluate and report on equipment behavior and the effectiveness of the network or Network Elements;
Accounting Management to measure network service usage and to cost it,
Security Management to facilitate the prevention and detection of improper use of network resources plus the containment of and recovery from security breaches.

For a service provider to remain competitive, its Network Management should form a framework that supports all existing and future Service Management Systems as well as the full range of Operations Support Systems, (such as billing, inventory, customer contact, trouble management, etc). It is imperative that these systems readily accommodate the introduction of new technologies and services. Lengthy delays to market usually result in opportunities and perhaps customers being lost.

The goal of effective Network Management is to respond to what all, and particularly the most profitable, customers want:

High reliability which translates into: message completions, low packet errors, long time between failures with short time to repair, etc. This can be accomplished through full use of network diversity, self-healing rings, sophisticated traffic engineering, dynamic real-time traffic management, for example.
New service offerings available early, particularly higher capacities.
Flexibility with the ability to have as much capacity as needed, when it is needed and for the time it is needed.
Service on demand. This involves automatic end-to-end provisioning.
Competitive pricing. This requires that the provider is able to maximize its utilization of the network resources.
Access to real-time quality indicators.
Sophisticated customers are also demanding Customer Network Management (CNM)
-- the ability to view and alter their segments of a provider’s network. This allows the customer to alter their data network configurations without delay and to manage faults dynamically,

These systems are clearly the backbone of successful telecommunications providers.

Why is IT The Center of The Universe?
For a number of years, AM/FM was promoted as the key data warehouse to support all of a telco’s network oriented activities. Whether or not that was once true, it is now clear that Network Management now occupies the center of this universe.

In contrast to the enormous quantities of relatively static data handled by an AM7FM system, a Network Management system is deluged by a stream of time critical trafilc, alarm and status data. The system must filter through this torrent to provide meaningful real-time information to a variety of functions as well as archive a great deal of information for future analysis. AM/FM systems are ill suited to managing any of this critical data.

What Does Network Management Gain From AM/FM?
Most Network Management applications have no need for any form of graphical representation. Color-coded tables of alarms and statuses have often been the most effective operator interface for these functions and any network schematic graphics were there simply to impress visiting senior management. On the other hand, some applications benefit greatly from schematic or gee-schematic graphical representations. They can be indispensable aids in understanding what is happening and why.
Graphics for Network Management are always schematic in nature since it is the overview that is important here. An operator or engineer will always start at a high level, aggregated network representation and drill down to other layers of detail as necessary. A physical or geographic representation usually has no value and in fact impedes understanding. A geo-schematic is useful but is only one of the styles of schematic that the user needs. Ideally the user should be able to toggle quickly between a variety of schematic styles in order to understand the network situation.

Nonetheless, there are areas in which Network Management can benefit from a linkage with AM/FM. For example:

Network traiffic planners need to know what new facilities could be close to coming on stream or that are planned to be available in the future.
Occasions where access to full distribution network information could be needed to understand problems in depth are becoming more prevalent as remote switching and programmable cross connects are deployed deeper into the distribution network.
Repair times could be reduced because full access to detailed physical network information would allow the dispatcher to send the best skilled and properly equipped team to restore service.

How Does AM/FM Benefit From Network Management?
The following are examples of the benefits that AM/FM applications could derive from linkages to the Network Management system:

Engineering planners would benefit from ready access to traffic patterns and customer information managed by the Network Management System.
Repair and preventive maintenance would be facilitated by fault data from network operations.
Up-to-date cable and tlber utilization information for the intelligent portions of the distribution network would assist network planners as well as allow for priorities to be managed in major cable run cuts.

Why Should They Work Together?
Both AM/FM and Network Management maintain models of network connectivity. AM/FM’s network model is maintained through design projects, as-built updates and feedback from maintenance. On the other hand, Network Management can maintain most of its network model by means of queties to the Network Elements themselves.

Certainly, these are not equivalent models but there is increasing overlap between AM/FM and Network Management modeling as a result of two trends. First, the distribution network now includes more and more intelligence farther and farther out in the network. Second, distribution networks are becoming more dynamic with the tree structure giving way to self-healing rings and route diversity.

In addition to the types of benefits noted in the last two sections, there are clearly potential benefits from avoiding this duplication and the reconciliation difficulties caused by independent databases.

How Can They Work Together?
The greatest difficulty in integrating AM/FM and Network Management is due to the basic differences in their different data models. The AM/FM network model is often both physical and logical whereas Network Management uses only a logical network model. Furthermore, Network Management is only interested in the network down to the last Network Element that can be controlled or monitored. It also has no real interest in the details of the links between Network Elements. As well, Network Management requires network simplification and aggregation in order to provide clear overviews of the network status.

With these difficulties in mind we now consider different approaches for integrating or interfacing AM/FM with real-time network management.

The simplest interface is for batch transfers of aggregated existing and possibly projected AM/FM network connectivity data for comparison with the Network Management network model and as supplementary information to the traflic planning application. In the other direction, batch file downloads of traffic and fault data can feed AM/FM applications such as network planning and repair and maintenance.
The next level of interface involves periodic (for example daily) hi-directional updates of new and changed capacities from AM/FM and of network status and fault data from Network Management.
Another option is to build query interfaces from individual applications in one environment to access and interpret the data in the other environment. For example, a query interface from the Network Fault Management application to the AM/FM database in order to retrieve location and physical network information.
The most complete integration option is to restructure the AM/’FM system as a supported application within a TMN standard framework Network Management system. The AM/FM system would operate in the same manner as any other TMN Business Management Layer 0SS such as Billing or Customer Care. In this option, there are well-defined TMN and CORBA interfaces that can ease the integration of the applications in the two environments.

Conclusion
Growing competition is forcing telecommunications providers to become very agile. The result is that their management systems need to become extremely flexible to meet the demands of new technology and customers. Network Management systems are becoming more and more crucial to the provider’s success.

In order to maintain its corporate significance and to provide mutual benefits, an AM/FM system should be integrated in some manner with the corporate Network Management system. The most complete and elegant approach is for the AM/FM system to fit into the application layer of a TMN compliant Network Management system.