Experiences in Integrated Multi-Domain Service Management

Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of telecommunications services and management systems over multiple organisational domains. This paper presents some of the results of practical development work in this area, detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services. This work covers the integration of multimedia services, broadband networks, service management and network management, though the detailed examples given focus specifically on the integration of services and service management

Inter-Domain Integration of Services and Service Management

The evolution of the global telecommunications industry into an open services market presents developers of telecommunication service and management systems with many new challenges. Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of service and management systems over multiple organisational domains. These integration issues have been examined in the ACTS project Prospect by developing a working set of integrated, managed telecommunications services for a user trial. This paper presents the initial results of this work detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services

Telecommunication Services Engineering- Definitions, Architectures and Tools

This paper introduces telecommunication services engineering through a definition of services, of network architectures that run services, and of methods, techniques and tools used to develop services. We emphasize the Intelligent Network (IN), the Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) and TINA architecture

Monitoring extensions for component-based distributed software

This paper defines a generic class of monitoring extensions to component-based distributed enterprise software. Introducing a monitoring extension to a legacy application system can be very costly. In this paper, we identify the minimum support for application monitoring within the generic components of a distributed system, necessary for rapid development of new monitoring extensions. Furthermore, this paper offers an approach for design and implementation of monitoring extensions at reduced cost. A framework of basic facilities supporting the monitoring extensions is presented. These facilities handle different aspects critical to the monitoring process, such as ordering of the generated monitoring events, decoupling of the application components from the components of the monitoring extensions, delivery of the monitoring events to multiple consumers, etc.\ud The work presented in this paper is being validated in the prototype of a large distributed system, where a specific monitoring extension is built as a tool for debugging and testing the application behaviour.\u

A Generic Network and System Management Framework

Networks and distributed systems have formed the basis of an ongoing communications revolution that has led to the genesis of a wide variety of services. The constantly increasing size and complexity of these systems does not come without problems. In some organisations, the deployment of Information Technology has reached a state where the benefits from downsizing and rightsizing by adding new services are undermined by the effort required to keep the system running. Management of networks and distributed systems in general has a straightforward goal: to provide a productive environment in which work can be performed effectively. The work required for management should be a small fraction of the total effort. Most IT systems are still managed in an ad hoc style without any carefully elaborated plan. In such an environment the success of management decisions depends totally on the qualification and knowledge of the administrator. The thesis provides an analysis of the state of the art in the area of Network and System Management and identifies the key requirements that must be addressed for the provisioning of Integrated Management Services. These include the integration of the different management related aspects (i.e. integration of heterogeneous Network, System and Service Management). The thesis then proposes a new framework, INSMware, for the provision of Management Services. It provides a fundamental basis for the realisation of a new approach to Network and System Management. It is argued that Management Systems can be derived from a set of pre-fabricated and reusable Building Blocks that break up the required functionality into a number of separate entities rather than being developed from scratch. It proposes a high-level logical model in order to accommodate the range of requirements and environments applicable to Integrated Network and System Management that can be used as a reference model. A development methodology is introduced that reflects principles of the proposed approach, and provides guidelines to structure the analysis, design and implementation phases of a management system. The INSMware approach can further be combined with the componentware paradigm for the implementation of the management system. Based on these principles, a prototype for the management of SNMP systems has been implemented using industry standard middleware technologies. It is argued that development of a management system based on Componentware principles can offer a number of benefits. INSMware Components may be re-used and system solutions will become more modular and thereby easier to construct and maintain

Design and implementation of a fault management service for heterogeneous networks using Tina Network Resource architecture

Master of Science in Engineering - EngineeringFaults are unavoidable and cause network downtime and degradation of large and complex communication networks. The need for fault management capabilities for improving network reliability is critical to rectify these faults. Current communication networks are moving towards the distributed computing environment enabling these networks to transport heterogeneous multimedia information across end to end connections. An advanced fault management system is thus required for such communication networks. Fault Management provides information on the status of the network by locating, detecting, identifying, isolating, and correcting network problems thereby increasing network reliability. The TINA (Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture) standards define a Network Resource Architecture (NRA) that provides a framework of a transport network that is capable of transporting heterogeneous multimedia media information across heterogeneous networks. TINA also defines a Management Architecture that follows the functional area organization defined in the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Management Framework, namely fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management (FCAPS). The aim of this project is to utilise the TINA NRA and Management Architecture concepts and principles to design and implement a distributed Fault Management Service for heterogeneous networks. The design presented here utilises TINA’s fault management specifi- cations, together with UML modelling tools to developed this Fault Management Service. The design incorporates the use of CORBA and SNMP to provide a distributed management functionality capable of providing fault management support across heterogeneous networks. The generic nature of the fault management service is tested on the SATINA Trial platform which consists of both an ATM network as well as an IP MPLS network. The report concludes that the Fault Management Service is applicable to any connectionoriented network that is modeled using the TINA NRA specification and principles

Managing Next Generation Networks (NGNs) based on the Service-Oriented Architechture (SOA). Design, Development and testing of a message-based Network Management platform for the integration of heterogeneous management systems.

Next Generation Networks (NGNs) aim to provide a unified network infrastructure to offer multimedia data and telecommunication services through IP convergence. NGNs utilize multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies, creating a converged packet-switched network infrastructure, where service-related functions are separated from the transport functions. This requires significant changes in the way how networks are managed to handle the complexity and heterogeneity of NGNs. This thesis proposes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based management framework that integrates heterogeneous management systems in a loose coupling manner. The key benefit of the proposed management architecture is the reduction of the complexity through service and data integration. A network management middleware layer that merges low level management functionality with higher level management operations to resolve the problem of heterogeneity was proposed. A prototype was implemented using Web Services and a testbed was developed using trouble ticket systems as the management application to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed framework. Test results show the correcting functioning of the system. It also concludes that the proposed framework fulfils the principles behind the SOA philosophy

A Consumer Premises End User Interface for OSA/Parlay Applications

Student Number : 9812990V - MSc project report - School of Electrical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built EnvironmentThe NGN is a multi-service network which inter-works with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), the voice network and the data network provided by Internet. Through network independent APIs such as OSA-Parlay, the NGN slowly migrates and converges Telecoms and IT networks, voice and Internet, into a common packet infrastructure. The OSA/Parlay group defines a softswitch architecture which provides network independent APIs or SCFs that enable cross network application development The Parlay softswitch provides connectivity to underlying transport networks for application providers. The standard specifies the interaction between application providers and the softswitch. However, the standard does not specify an interface to regulate the interaction between service providers and the consumer/end user domain. This means that applications housed in the service provider domain have no defined interfaces to manage service delivery to the consumer domain. For most service providers, the lack of a non-standardized API set impedes efforts to decrease application creation and deployment time. This research investigates the design and implementation of a standard consumer interface which can be used by application providers within an OSA/Parlay system to deliver service content to end users. The main objectives with regard to the functionality provided by the interface include the integration of facilities which will assist application providers to manage end user access and authentication (to enable users to establish a secure context for service usage), subscription (to handle the subscription life cycle), and service usage management (to enable the initiation and termination of services). The TINA-Consortium (TINA-C) has developed a service architecture to support the creation and provisioning of services in the NGN. The TINA architecture offers a comprehensive set of concepts and principles that can be used in the design of NGN services. The architecture consists of a set of reusable and interoperable service components encapsulating a rich and well defined set of APIs aimed at supporting the interaction between application providers and consumers. TINA’s session concepts, information structures, interfaces and service components can be used to support the design of a consumer premises end user interface for OSA/Parlay. This research also aims to explore the feasibility of using the TINA API within an OSA/Parlay system to support consumer domain service delivery. In order to implement the consumer interface for Parlay applications, the ability of the TINA service architecture to provide Access and Authentication management; Subscription and Profile management; and Service Usage management was investigated. The report documents the design and implementation of an OSA/Parlay consumer interface utilizing TINA service components and interfaces

A framework for abstracting complexities in service delivery platforms

The telecommunication (telco) and Information Technology (IT) industries are converging into a single highly competitive market, where service diversity is the critical success factor. To provide diverse services, the telco network operator must evolve the traditional voice service centric network into a generic service centric network. An appropriate, but incomplete, architecture for this purpose is the Service Delivery Platform (SDP). The SDP represents an IT-based system that simplifies access to telco capabilities using services. SDP services offer technology independent interfaces to external entities. The SDP has vendor-specific interpretations that mix standards-based and proprietary interfaces to satisfy specific requirements. In addition, SDP architectural representations are technology-specific. To be widely adopted the SDP must provide standardised interfaces. This work contributes toward SDP standardisation by defining a technology independent and extendable architecture, called the SDP Framework. To define the framework we first describe telecom-IT convergence and a strategy to manage infrastructure integration. Second, we provide background on the SDP and its current limitations. Third, we treat the SDP as a complex system and determine a viewpoint methodology to define its framework. Fourth, we apply viewpoints by extracting concepts and abstractions from various standard-based telecom and IT technologies: the Intelligent Network (IN), Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture (TINA), Parlay, enhanced Telecommunications Operations Map (eTOM), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Fifth, by extending the concepts and abstractions we define the SDP framework. The framework is based on a generic business model and reference model. The business model shows relationships between SDP, telco and external entities using business relationships points. The reference model extends the business model by formalising relationships as reference points. Reference points expand into interfaces exposed by services. Applications orchestrate service functions via their interfaces. Service and application distribution is abstracted by middleware that operates across business model domains. Services, interfaces, applications and middleware are managed in Generic Service Oriented Architectures (GSOA). Multiple layered GSOAs structure the SDP framework. Last, we implement the SDP framework using standard-based technologies with open service interfaces. The implementation proves framework concepts, promotes SDP standardisation and identifies research areas