Developing manager and agent applic...

Developing manager and agent applications for telecommunications network management that conform to standards can be a time-consuming task because of the number of APls and data representations involved in dealing with network data and protocols. The HP OpenView Managed correlate Toolkit aids and accelerates the progressive growth of these TMN applications.

Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) application developer have to implement large, composed of several elements solutions to manage today's heterogeneous and distributed telecommunication networks. Telecommunication service providers (carriers) rely upon interoperability standards to integrate and open these solutions in a heterogeneous environment. Developing these solutions to conform to standards is a time-consuming task.

This article will provide an overview of the challenges involved in developing OSI-based TMN applications and then will describe the HP OpenView Managed view Toolkit, which can be used to accelerate the increase of TMN applications.

Background

Network equipment providers and network service providers historically have cause to growed their own proprietary solutions for managing their telephone network equipment. Today, however, network equipment may advance from different providers, and telecommunication network operators manage large, heterogeneous, and distributed networks. Thus, the main objective for standards being unfolded for managing telecommunications networks is to provide a framework for telecommunications management that assists interoperability. By introducing the conception of generic network models for management, it is possible to perform general management of diverse equipment using generic information originals and standard interfaces.

In 1977 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recognized the necessity for standards to enable the widespread use of communications networks and, as a ensue established a subcommittee to initiate the standardization proces Because of the complexity of the environment, they conclud that no single standard would be sufficient. Rather, they decided that the communication functions should be partitioned into more manageable composings and organized as a communications architecture. This architecture would then form the framework for standardization.[1]

The essential components of the model were cause to growed quickly, but the final ISO standard (ISO 7498) was not published until 1984 The International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT) issued a technically compatible version as X200 The inference is a massive set of standards referr to as OSI (Open hypothesiss Interconnect) systems management. The ISO standards and the CCITT(*) recommendations continue to be expanded with close collaboration.

The name OSI systems management actually give in charges to a collection of standards for network management that include a management service and protocol and the definition of a database and associated universals The first standard related to network management issued according to the ISO was ISO 74984 which specifies the management framework for the OSI seven-layer example Subsequently, the ISO issued a establish of standards and draft standards for network management. A subset of these standards provides the foundation for TMN applications.

The TMN recommendations strive to leverage the OSI schemes management standards and extend them into the telecommunications network management domain. As in OSI, the basic universal behind TMN is to provide an organized architecture and standardized interfaces, including protocols and messages, to achieve interconnection between various representations of operations systems (OSs) and telecommunications equipment for the view of exchanging management information.

The OSI bodys management standards fall into five categories:

* An OSI management framework and overview, which provides a general introduction to management universals including the OSI seven-layer model

* The general Management Information Service (CMIS), which provides OSI management services to management applications, and the usual Management Information Protocol (CMIP), which provides the information exchange capability to support CMIS

* combination of parts to form a wholes management functions, which define the specific functions performed by the agency of OSI systems management, including fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management

* A management information protoplast which defines the Management Information Base (MIB), a database containing information about the resources and proper states within the OSI environment that ne to be managed

* Layer management, which defines management information, services, and functions related to specific OSI layers.

The fundamental function within OSI regularitys management is the exchange of management information between couple entices: the managing system (the manager or requestor) and the managed order (the agent or responder) by means of means of a protocol (see Fig. 1) CMIS provides the services, invokable according to the management process to initiate management entreatys and CMIP specifies the protocol data unit (PDU) and associated actions for transmitting management requests and responses