Man's new best friend, TMN-based inventory system "senses" network assets

The days of inaccurate network inventories will be obsolete if a new telecommunications management network-based application succeeds.

The Inventory Control System, unveiled by the OASys Group, does what has been the responsibility of field service workers: documenting network changes and making sure that the parent carrier knows what assets it has deployed.

"When service providers try to figure out what's in the slots and on the shelves throughout their networks, it's still somewhat of a guess," said Paul Doolan, vice president of engineering at OASys, a Cabletron Systems subsidiary. "Their inventory records, which are still kept up with 20-year-old, POTS-centric manual input systems, are usually only about 80% accurate.

Accurate inventory is necessary for customer service management, root cause alarm analysis, bandwidth management and other emerging trends, Doolan said. "As carriers come to depend on the use of each other's networks, a complete knowledge of these assets will become critical," he said.

The ICS system, which is integrated into Cabletron's Spectrum Enterprise Management platform, discovers the network facilities and reports in detail, down to exactly how multiplexers are configured and the equipment installed in them.

The system uses an object-oriented database with open application programming interfaces to work with TMN-compliant equipment and older legacy systems. Because the inventory of available lines and services will be up-to-date, carriers can avoid costly mistakes when they agree to service commitments.

For managers, "the view they get will not be based on who makes the device but on what the device does," said Doolan.

"The system has a common naming facility that allows service providers to name the equipment and facilities in any way they want. The idea is to provide a homogenous view of heterogeneous networks."