Will intelligent surveillance replace reactive

Intelligent network services are critical competitive market components, but intelligent network management is the key to marketplace success.

More than subtle word distinctions, managing today's intelligent networks requires the proactive, predictive, self-diagnostic and reporting capabilities that intelligent surveillance offers. It redefines the service provider's notion of network management and raises questions about traditional testing scenarios. Intelligent surveillance isn't smart technicians making brilliant diagnoses. Today's complex networks and dwindling expertise make that scenario nearly impossible. It is, however, the next best thing. Aided by increasingly intelligent network elements, intelligent surveillance software monitors networks, identifies potential trouble areas, diagnoses problems and helps keep services working and customers happy. Intelligent surveillance offers a significant competitive advantage. As transmission capability moves into the realm of commodity, distinguishing network management characteristics will separate the offerings of competing suppliers.

A Traditional Scenario Consider the traditional testing scenario. In most instances, network operators rely on customer trouble reports to identify service problems. The customer call becomes the trigger that causes a service provider to react. That response involves test and dispatch procedures designed to identify, isolate and resolve the problem.

High-capacity (DS-1/DS-3), point-to-point troubleshooting often requires customers to be involved in the process. If the circuit isn't out of service, network operators must obtain customer permission to take it down anyway, rendering it inoperable during the troubleshooting process. In automated networks, operators run test patterns through the customer's circuit to help find the trouble source. Control centers dispatch technicians to support the trouble isolation process and ultimately fix the problem. Sonet transmission systems offer some troubleshooting process relief. If a portion of the customer's service rides a Sonet fiber optic facility, it can be rerouted-which may eliminate the problem. Because Sonet isn't 100% deployed, however, the opportunity for rerouting is minimal at best and merely delays the requirement to deactivate the service, then identify the problem and fix it. And multiple problems must be addressed before all customers are affected.

Fixing problems has always required a high level of troubleshooting expertise. Technicians were once the primary source, but they have long since been supported or replaced with expert test systems. This is a result of increased network complexity, centralization and declining staffs. But it's the newer trends-increasing bandwidth demands and competition-that nullify the reactive "test-and-find" procedures.

Customers simply won't tolerate disproportionate error levels, service interruptions and downtime-and when service alternatives exist, they'll take their business elsewhere. The recently passed telecommunications reform act will soon dramatically increase the number of alternatives available. Network operators that choose to compete on service quality cannot rely on reactive trouble responses when intelligent surveillance affords proactive opportunities.

Today's Market Realities Does network management need redefinition? Network operators only need to survey the rapidly changing services landscape of equipment, customer demand, growth and competition to find the obvious answer to this question. Figure 1 shows how local access networks have evolved.

As new services are introduced, each generation of equipment has become more complex. Digital switches interact with intelligent computer platforms and customer responses, offering a near-infinite array of services.

Fiber optic systems transport network traffic, concentrating more services onto the same facility. But considering the unique testing problems DS-3 circuits posed less than 10 years ago, is the industry really ready for Sonet's OC-192 speed?

Network architectures also are getting more complex. While point-to-point fiber systems, individual multiplexers and physical cross-connects were once the norm, Sonet forever changes the notion of a fiber "system" with its optical interfaces, integrated multiplexing, and drop-and-insert and dynamic ring/mesh/hub configurations.

Asynchronous transfer mode adds another level of network flexibility. Switched virtual circuits create powerful routing and service dynamics but radically alter the concept of circuit testing. Isolating trouble becomes infinitely more difficult and wrong actions can be devastating.

This expanded network capability comes from an increasingly diverse manufacturing base. Network operators are the clear beneficiaries of increased vendor choice and a host of new solutions, but they must figure out how to integrate them. Even in standards-based environments, complete interoperability is not guaranteed, but testing and isolating trouble in multivendor environments is critical.

Capacity and Complexity The industry is changing at breakneck speed. Technology improvements now come faster and more frequently, both satisfying and stimulating customer demand. At the same time that networks are averaging 30% to 50% growth per year, service providers continue to make staffing cutbacks.

This competitive marketplace reality has forced network operators to make do with less. Fortunately, network complexity and operations issues remain relatively transparent to customers, who see only the networks' potential in increased bandwidth. Customers have long since realized there's more to telecommunications than voice and data.

The industry has successfully compressed and squeezed content into available bandwidth, but further improvements must come from increased transmission rather than compression ability. And it's happening now.

Moore's Law for computers leads to a similar scenario for communications. Just as chip density has increased processing power by a factor of 1 million during the last decade, so will bandwidth see similar gains. Implications for network integrity increase a millionfold also.

Increased bandwidth requires higher performance levels. Even at today's transmission rates, one in a million errors translates to errors every second. Depending on the content, customers won't tolerate those performance levels-but they also won't have to.

If one service provider can't meet required quality levels, two other service providers will be ready, willing and able to do so. And if it's not a traditional telephone company wireline connection, it may be hybrid fiber/coax, satellite or cell-based from a competitive access provider

A growing bandwidth pie and a drastically altered regulatory framework removes uncertainties and lessens the risk of technology-based investments. Service monopolies, duopolies or oligopolies cease to exist. Service and bandwidth competition is here to stay.

But while any network operator can offer telecommunications services, not all will deliver reliable, quality services. If there ever was a time to rethink telecommunications services and network management philosophies, it's now. This unique confluence of conditions and circumstances demands the capabilities intelligent surveillance solutions afford.

Intelligent Surveillance Intelligent surveillance involves a continuous network monitoring process. It relies on intelligent data collection and analysis software instead of test equipment hardware. It doesn't kick in after customer complaints; it anticipates and eliminates problems before they occur.

The statistical reality is that two out of three network outages predict themselves. Characteristic signs of equipment component degradation exist and can be identified and isolated. By monitoring and tracking equipment performance, problem areas can be anticipated and corrected before outages occur.

Intelligent surveillance relies on the intelligent reporting capability of network elements themselves. All network elements-T-1 to Sonet-have the ability to monitor and report errors. These abilities include instantaneous parameters such as bipolar violations, framing bit errors and cyclic redundancy check errors.

An error occurrence of any type creates an errored second, or a derived parameter. As a single instance it may cause only a retransmission that is typical in any network.

But taken together, dribbling error patterns can be analyzed and characterized as either spurious or indicative of a pending outage. And because dribbling errors are localized, it's easier to identify problems before a rash of outage-caused sympathetic alarms are generated throughout the network.

Through intelligent surveillance, these early trouble warnings allow network operators to predict and correct problems before service is affected. This ongoing, non-invasive testing uses continuous customer traffic as its test pattern in a proactive process that is not reactive to demand.

Rendering two-thirds of existing trouble calls obsolete has benefits for customers and network operators alike. Operators provide higher-quality, more reliable services with fewer outages, and customers are satisfied and loyal.

Aside from customer service improvements, predictive intelligent surveillance also is cost-effective. Avoiding customer service outages eliminates potential service rebates. And it's less expensive to dispatch and fix problems before they develop into outages.

Fix, Not Find Intelligent surveillance also helps with the unpredictable third type of network outage. These outages result from technician errors or outside interventions such as backhoe cuts.

Outages generate a multitude of direct and sympathetic equipment alarms. The number of alarms multiplies as transmission speeds increase, and network topology is more complex with new broadband technology. Because of these traffic and topology complexities and advanced customer services supported, prompt direct responses are necessary.

Intelligent surveillance systems sift through the multitude of alarms, and by using root cause analysis, they identify the outage's probable cause. This approach reduces a network operator's dependence on the declining pool of skilled technicians and relies instead on system and service logic to identify trouble locations. Control centers dispatch technicians to fix rather than find problems.

Root cause analysis uses alarm correlation techniques and is programmed with physical and logical system and service structures. Understanding these structures, its processing ability then sorts, correlates, identifies and locates trouble areas. The automated process eliminates time as a critical problem-solving constraint. Network operators respond quicker with appropriate personnel to fix the problem.

Network problems and trouble aren't going away; in fact, they're getting more complex. Intelligent network elements are more reliable but will always retain failure probabilities. And because of increasing traffic concentrations and bandwidth demands, consequences of failure are compounded and the stakes are higher.

Intelligent surveillance is a logical response to this increasingly complex and competitive environment. It represents a shift in thinking away from reactive demand testing toward proactive anticipatory surveillance.

The expansion of intelligent network elements provides the catalyst for making intelligent surveillance work. Regardless of manufacturer, network elements continuously report on their status. What's been missing until now is something to receive and interpret that information. Intelligent surveillance bridges the gap.

Capable of operating in multivendor environments, intelligent surveillance is a software solution to what's often viewed as a hardware problem. Using the customer's ongoing traffic, it monitors errors and looks for potential trouble.

As a result of intelligent surveillance, networks operate more efficiently and cost-effectively. Customers receive a better, more reliable service, along with reports that document network quality. In a competitive marketplace, managing networks effectively is a key competitive strategy that can differentiate a carrier. Bob Copithorne is President and Chief Executive Officer of Clear Communications Corp., Lincolnshire, Ill.

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