Knowledge is power: IN providers must look inward for answers

One of the genuine concerns that incumbent carriers have about the rush to converge the public network with the IP-based architecture of the Internet is the acute loss of control. Not just control over the databases and connectivity, which is a foregone conclusion, but losing control over who is accessing the network and when and how it is being used - and abused.

"New [intelligent network] IP technology may be ready for private networks and startups but not for carriers with an embedded base. Reliability, availability and recovery have never been considered in an IP environment," said Walter Malinowski, Ameritech's executive director of Advanced Intelligent Network service development for SBC operations, at an IEC conference in Lincolnshire, Ill., in June.

In addition to - and a potential cause of - network performance issues, carriers are concerned about the rush to create and deploy new services.Without the proper tools to identify the impact of those services on the network or a way to analyze their usage, service providers could be shooting themselves in the foot.

"There are a lot of people out there who are technically savvy, and they forget that Joe Public is not," said Rebekah Keating, senior product manager for Illuminet Holdings. "All Joe Public may want is dial tone and the services [he] can get today. [He] may not really be interested in all these bells and whistles we're coming up with."

To provide insight into network performance and service usage in SS7 and converged networks, Botting Systems recently launched Total Network Knowledge. TNK is a set of software tools that collect and analyze SS7 messages. In development since 1996, Botting's Windows NT-based tools are designed to anticipate trouble in the network by capturing large amounts of data - 800,000 call records per minute. They also examine usage patterns down to individual subscribers or identify the use of specific trunks for particular services.

"We are trying to put business intelligence in front of people so they can make good business decisions, whether they be in marketing, in network management or about convergence," said Rick Botting, president of Botting Systems.

TNK differs from typical network performance tools, which rely on operational measurements or threshold events, by examining every call on the network. Once the data has been extracted and analyzed, it also can be used for billing reconciliation by comparing the data to billing records or switch call detail records.

The TNK architecture has three components. A data collection engine called the CCRFiler collects SS7 records directly from the network in real time, compresses them and stores them in files that can be created at various time intervals depending on the size of the file a carrier wants to create.

The files are sent to a data conversion engine called the TCX, which converts the SS7 records into a proprietary format for analysis by the third component, TAU.Seven. TAU.Seven is the query and report generation engine.

"IN has always been intelligent," Botting said. "We just have to find intelligent ways to use it. Part of the problem has been having the architecture upon which to access the data and use it."

Botting Systems now offers the fruits of that architecture on a licensed or a hosted basis. For carriers that license TNK, Botting provides training. Carriers also can subscribe through Illuminet's service bureau or use the tools on a one-time or ad-hoc basis.

The ability to do real-time analysis directly on SS7 messages not only aids service providers in their network management efforts, it instills a necessary sense of reality into the world of convergence, Botting said. "There is going to be quite a long, drawn-out transition period with convergence, but over time - maybe even decades - we will go through many technical changes," he said. "We have to work very hard from an IN standpoint to learn how to understand those changes realistically and manage them accordingly. We have to be very realistic and sober about how we approach this."