Re-Defining IP/MPLS Management
While IP/MPLS control plane protocols are crucial to enabling unprecedented cost-effectiveness for rerouting around failures, the majority of today’s management applications from other equipment vendors do not concern themselves with monitoring the operational state of the control plane, providing topology visualiza- tion or validating its configuration. The reason for this management gap is historical.
The first successful, large scale, IP-based networks were deployed to support residential high speed Internet (HSI) connectivity. This high volume, low cost, best-effort service did not warrant the need for sophisticated management software to track service SLAs. Aside from an emphasis on using IT methods to flexibly provision subscribers, IP operations for this type of network relied on low value element management systems (EMS) to configure and monitor basic infrastructure.
But the advent of mission critical business services and service delivery sensitive subscriber services such as video — all riding over an IP/MPLS infrastructure — has changed service providers’ management needs. Simplifying service provisioning, reducing MTTR and assuring a high quality of service has become paramount.
Alcatel-Lucent responded to this need by introducing comprehensive element, network and service manage- ment in one platform — the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager [Figure 2].
Figure 2. Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM Provides Element, Network and Service Management in ONE platform
Service Management | Managing | |
Customer Service | |
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Network Management | Managing Logically | 5620 SAM |
| Linked Nodes | |
Element Management | | |
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Managing | |
| Physical Hardware | |
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4 Alcatel-Lucent 5650 Control Plane Assurance Manager
