JAN 2012 ISSUE 64

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PON management: The cloud is the limit

Exploring O&M for IP+OTN synergy

ODN deployment made easy

China Mobile eliminates IP O&M challenges

‘Steering Wheel’for ultra-broadband network operation

Sponsor: Huawei COMMUNICATE Editorial Board,Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

Consultants: Hu Houkun, Xu Zhijun, Xu Wenwei, Yu ChengdongZhang Hongxi, Zha Jun

Editor-in-Chief: Gao Xianrui ([email protected])

Editors: Jason Patterson, Julia Yao, Pearl Zhu, Michael Huang, Joyce Fan, Xue Hua, Li Xuefeng, Xu Ping Pan Tao, Chen Yuhong, Zhou Shumin

Contributors: He Peicheng, Ren Xudong, Lu Hongju, Li GuojianQu Fanli, Liu Jiangping, Li Lifang, Jiang GuopingXie Xiqian, Xu Xiaobo, He Huafeng, Jiang Xing

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel: +86 755 28789348, 28789343

Fax: +86 755 28787923

Address: B1, Huawei Industrial Base, Bantian, Longgang, Shenzhen 518129, China

Publication Registration No.: Yue B No.10148

Copyright © Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 2012. All rights reserved.No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

NO WARRANTYThe contents of this document are for information purpose only, and provided “as is”. Except as required by applicable laws, no warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, are made in relation to contents of this document. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no case shall Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages, or lost profits, business, revenue, data, goodwill or anticipated savings arising out of or in connection with any use of this document.

Analysys Mason predicts that broadband connections will reach seven billion in 2015 (one for every person on the planet); telcos can thank the likes of Apple and Amazon for this mess. What’s worse, video addiction is no longer the province of out-of-work uncles and other couch potatoes as OTT providers such as Netflix and YouTube have made screen watching the default state of an entire generation and this shows no signs of slowing down. The old 20/80 ratio for mobile data consumption has become 10/90, with the iPad accounting for a large chunk of that top 10, and the tablet game is just getting started.

So, what’s a carrier to do? Customers have to be kept happy, but this is no easy task. Operators rank just above the oil companies in the public eye. A ubiquitous broadband network, characterized by services that are comprehensive, ever-growing and hip, accessible through any screen, is needed.

Such a broadband network requires full-service bearing capability based on IP, which is even more difficult to do than it is to say. With the service diversity now requisite, and IP’s inherent dynamism, O&M has become daunting in terms of complexity, cost, TTM, fault location, and troubleshooting. OPEX now consumes up to 60% of a carrier’s revenue, and this will probably get worse before it gets better. Fortunately, a lot of these costs are amendable. Efficiencies can be tightened up at every step of the O&M process, but this will require a radical rethinking on the part of carriers – a shift in focus from KPI to QoE.

IP routing is dynamic, which introduces a much greater degree of network opacity. KPIs no longer necessarily reflect QoE. Operators may not know that there is a problem until complaints come in, and even then, the fault itself may remain elusive. Thus, the problem cannot be allowed to happen in the first place; O&M must become proactive.

A misunderstood IP network is an unruly bull, but what operators need is a cash cow; that’s where Huawei comes in. Huawei has a wealth of experience with every terrain, timeframe, and technology on Earth, which gives our network consultation and management services the weight of truth. We offer a range of products & solutions for the entire network lifecycle, from the chalkboard to the dashboard. OPEX and TTM decrease, as Huawei assumes the burdens of O&M, freeing up operators to focus on service differentiation and ARPU.

With Huawei, network O&M need no longer be a defensive war. Operators can control the ground on which the battles are fought, enabling their goals to shift from the present to the future.

O&M: Where the war is won or lost

Zha Jun

President of Huawei

Network Product Line

07 China Mobile eliminates IP O&M challengesChina Mobile operates the world’s largest IP backbone network, serving the world’s largest subscriber base. Its experiences provide a reference for worldwide carriers looking to resolve their network maintenance problems during the IP transition.

By Kong Lingshan (China Mobile)

27 Planning your way to ASON viabilityBy Fu Bo

24 Smartening your pipesBy Ma Lin

04 PON management: The cloud is the limit

By Zhang Shujian (China Telecom)

20 ODN deployment made easy Optical distribution networking is an essential FTTx element, accounting for 60 to 70% of an operator’s total FTTx investment. Considering the massive CAPEX involved, ODN deploymentfacilitators are in demand.

By Xie Liansheng

Experts’ Forum Main Topics

How to Operate

30 IP network stewardship with HuaweiFor the telecom industry, network transformation is not a singular event but a constant process, but it can be made easier through refinement and collaboration with the right partners.

By Ayush Sharma

What’s inside:

12 ‘Steering Wheel’ for ultra-broadband network operationHuawei’s ‘Steering Wheel’ solution enhances operator EOT capabilities in terms of the product/service lifecycle, enhancing TTM/QoE while reducing OPEX.

By Ren Xudong & Zhu Zhaohui

Cover Story

Let’s COMMUNICATE beyond technology and share understandings of the latest industry trends,

successful operational cases, leading technologies and more. Based on in-depth analysis of the

matters that lie close to your heart, we will help you stay on top of the telecom game.

33 ODN O&M: Manageable and easyBy Liu Huaqing

55 Cloud vs. In-house IT for SMBsBy Dr. Nino Vidovic, Dr. John Waclawsky &

Dr. George Vanecek

36 China Unicom Shanghai: Devising strategies to bear the future

By Li Sheng

58 Timely & accurate IP network diagnostics

By Huang Bin

Solutions

40 Simplifying OTNO&M for greater efficiencyWith the introduction of OTN into metro networking, O&M personnel face an entirely new network structure. Legacy O&M methods from the SDH days have proven inadequate in the face of OTN architecture.

By Li Bo

42 Worry-free FTTx O&MBy Liu Huaqing

46 Professional service assurance for IPTV

By Zhang Wei, Wang Yindong & Xu Dongbing

49 Enhanced optimizationservice for microwave networks

By Geng Jianxu & Ma Bin

Cutting Edge

52 Exploring O&M for IP+OTN synergyIP+OTN synergy can potentially facilitate the rapid growth of IP backbone networks, which is increasingly pressuring operation and maintenance (O&M) efforts for any & all operators who employ them.

By Huang Hairong

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 641

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Huawei Marine Launches BDM Cable System Solution

Tianjin, 11 January, 2012, Huawei Marine announced

the successful completion of the BATAM-DUMAI-

MELAKA (BDM) Cable System that links Batam and

Dumai in Indonesia with a turnkey solution by adding a

new landing point at Melaka in Malaysia.

This new solution provides the joint-operators of the

system – Telekom Malaysia Berhad, PT XL Axiata Tbk.,

and PT Mora Telematika Indonesia (BDM Purchasers)

– with the exceptional bandwidth improvement they

require to meet the increasing demand for international

communications in Malaysia and Indonesia.

“The completion of this BDM cable system will

bring a new era of information sharing and transfer to

the people of Indonesia and Malaysia,” said Mr. Nigel

Bayliff, CEO of Huawei Marine.

Huawei Joins Cloud Security Alliance

Shenzhen, 10 January, 2012, Huawei announced

that it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) as

a corporate member to help promote the use of best

practices for providing security assurance within cloud

computing. As a leading provider of cloud computing

solutions to both operators and enterprises, Huawei

will work with the CSA and its members to advance

their innovative efforts, such as the Trusted Cloud

Initiative, to ensure that users of cloud services can

have confidence in the security of their information.

Huawei's CSA membership is part of the company's

commitment to developing more open, cooperative

and secure communications ecosystems – linking

operators to enterprises to consumers. The resulting

vertically integrated, hyper-connected communications

landscape will allow businesses to reap the benefits

of cloud computing with secure solutions that make

communication and collaboration more efficient.

As part of its commitment to cyber security, Huawei

established the Cyber Security Evaluation Centre in the UK

to allow for independent verification and certification of

its products. This center allows for complete evaluation of

Huawei products' security and encompasses source code

review, hardware design review and inspection of the

complete supply chain.

Huawei Unveils World’s Slimmest Smartphone

Las Vegas, 9 January, 2012, Huawei unveiled the

world’s slimmest smartphone at the 2012 Consumer

Electronics Show (CES). The Huawei Ascend P1 S is

6.68mm thin and features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED

960 x 540 touchscreen with Corning® Gorilla® Glass.

The Ascend P1 S is also the fastest and most compact

smartphone in its class with a dual-core 1.5GHz TI

OMAP 4460 Cortext-A9 processor and Android 4.0 Ice

Cream Sandwich operating system.

Huawei also unveiled the Ascend P1 which,

as part of the same smartphone series, boasts

the same functionality while measuring 7.69mm.

Delivering the ultimate in elegance and speed with a

1670mAh/1800mAh battery, the Huawei Ascend P1/

P1 S series provides the fastest multi-tasking, video

replay and gaming experience in its class.

The Huawei Ascend P1/P1 S series features a super-

sleek and narrow 64.8mm body, elegant contours and

an effortlessly stylish design. The PPVD back cover

coating evenly distributes heat, and provides a strong

metallic, three-dimensional design with a delicate

texture. The Ascend P1/P1 S is available in metallic

black, ceramic white and cherry-blossom pink with

more colors to come to match your personal style

wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 64 2

E-Band Microwave Equipment Verification on LTE Test Network

Shenzhen, 5 December,

2011, Huawei has announced

the successful deployment

and verification of its E-Band

microwave equipment on a

comprehensive LTE test network

in Chengdu, China. Test results

demonstrate the robust service-

bearing capability and market-

readiness of Huawei's E-Band

microwave equipment.

E-Band is a recently-utilized

extremely h igh-f requency

microwave band (80GHz)

that supports multiple Gbps

t ransmiss ion bandwidths,

meaning it is able to meet the

considerable service backhaul

requirements of LTE networks.

Huawei's E-band microwave

equ ipment of fers a la rge

Industry’s First Giga DSL Prototype

Shenzhen, 14 December,

2011, Huawei has announced

the succes s fu l l aunch o f

the industry's first Giga DSL

prototype, which employs

time division duplexing (TDD)

to achieve total upstream and

downstream rates of 1,000Mbps

over a single twisted pair.

Through low-power spectral

density in-signal transmission,

Huawei's Giga DSL prototype

reduces radiation interference

and power consumption, while

providing a total upstream and

downstream rate of 1Gbps within

100 meters, and 500Mbps+

within 200 meters, making it a

cost-effective option for ultra-

broadband access networking

for any operator looking to stay

ahead of its rivals.

Giga DSL is a promising

n e x t - g e n e r a t i o n a c c e s s

technology. In 2011, the

International Telecommunication

Union – Telecommunication

Standardization (ITU-T) set up a

G.fast project team dedicated

to formulating new standards

for short-range ultra-speed

access with the aim of achieving

500Mbps access per twisted pair

within 100 meters. Huawei has

been a major technical contributor

to this team, having recently

worked to incorporate TDD-

OFDM as a G.fast modulation

mode.

H u a w e i a l s o r e c e n t l y

announced the successful

development of the world's

first node level vectoring (NLV)

prototype.

capacity, is easy to install, and

requires next to no space in

an equipment room. A series

of performance and pressure

tests on a network with high

LTE data usage has proven its

performance and advanced

features.

Three months of successful

operations during the extreme

Chengdu summer heat and rain

demonstrated the reliability and

stability of the E-Band microwave

prototype equipment. "The

i m p l e m e n t a t i o n o f t h i s

comprehensive test network is

a big step in commercializing

Huawei's E-Band microwave

offerings,” said Chen Shijun,

Huawei's General Manager of

Microwave Technology.

Huawei Awarded with Global Growth and Innovation in Telecom Managed Services Award by Frost & Sullivan

Shanghai, 22 November, 2011,

Huawei has been awarded the

"Global Growth and Innovation

in Telecom Managed Services of

the Year Award," the only award

in the global managed service

Sullivan, presented the award.

This honor further recognized

Huawei's leadership and solution

competitiveness in the managed

services field.

Accord ing to a g loba l

survey conducted by Frost &

Sullivan, Huawei has become

a n i m p o r t a n t p r o v i d e r

o f w o r l d - c l a s s man aged

telecommunication services.

Huawei’s managed services have

made excellent achievements

in compound growth, market

position, innovation, and delivery

capacities over the past year.

To better support operators'

requirements in future ICT

industry convergence, cloud

computing, All-IP network

Han Xiao, Director of Huawei Managed Services Product Line Aroop Zutshi, Global President & Managing Partner, Frost & Sullivan (right)

field, by Frost & Sullivan at the

Global Community of Growth,

Innovation and Leadership 2011,

held in Shanghai on November

8. Aroop Zutshi, Global President

& Managing Partner of Frost &

evolution, and fixed broadband

(FBB) & mobile broadband

(MBB) network operation and

maintenance, Huawei keeps

innovating and developing

the Managed Services Unified

Platform (MSUP), based on

global telecom and IT standards,

such as enhanced Telecom

Operations Mapping (eTOM),

the Information Technology

Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and

the TL9000. This platform has

a process-driven architecture

and in tegrates operat ion

and maintenance processes,

organizations, and IT systems,

enabling effective centralized

management of operators'

telecom services.

Experts’ Forum

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 643 4

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China Telecom is now studying cloud technology

for future PON management; while China Mobile has made

equipment performance, resources, and operating status

visible through its monitoring system.

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 64

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China Mobile eliminates IP O&M challenges07

PON management: The cloud is the limit04

he introduction of PON has changed telecommunications networking, both in terms of deployment procedures and O&M. Automatic service launch, fault

location, and onsite maintenance have all become more challenging, as have network management and quality of service (QoS) assurance; all place greater demands on O&M, both in terms of labor and skill.

To overcome these difficulties, China Telecom’s provincial branches have each established a variety of centralized PON management systems that leverage either new or legacy infrastructure.

In 2011, we invited a number of vendors, including Huawei, to draw specifications for a PON element management system (EMS) that would simplify the interconnections between our own IT support systems and a vendor’s EMS. These specifications would include detailed guidelines

T for overall PON management and secondary procedures such as service launch, diagnostics, and alarm handling.

Enhancing PON EMS

Automatic service provisioning

Automatic service launches are critical to widespread FTTx deployment. Clear and specific requirements are needed for both network deployment and service launch. We already had certain requirements for northbound-related tasks, but we lacked service provisioning procedures that effectively leveraged the PON EMS for efficient network pre-configuration and parameter management.

We also needed to consider how these procedures

PON managementThe cloud is the limit

By Zhang Shujian (China Telecom)

China Telecom commenced a passive optical network (PON) deployment in 2007 that reached over 15 million FTTx subscribers by the end of 2010; but despite this rapid expansion, it has been able to establish a complete FTTx management system, and it is now studying cloud technology as an option for future PON management.

Experts’ Forum

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 645 6

Zhang Shujian is a senior director of network operations at China Telecom. He has been responsible for the O&M of its Signaling System No. 7 (SS7), high-speed backbone, and integrated FTTx networks. He has also played a key role in the operator’s PON standardizations process and its FTTH projects.

Experts’ Forum

would vary by configuration and device.China Telecom responded by identifying

the templates/parameters that warranted pre-configuration for OLTs and terminals; these specific requirements provide a baseline for project delivery and network cutover, enabling us to configure network devices in batches.

Enhanced alarm processing

PON infrastructure is inherently more dynamic than its predecessors; unfortunately, this has led to a burgeoning number of alarms. One of our provincial branches dealt with over 100,000 per day, which would be a disaster if there really were that many crises. As it is, it is merely a heavy burden, as a lot of effort is wasted on false alarms, while the real breakdowns are frequently ignored amidst all the noise.

Some of our branches have developed upper-layer systems for alarm sorting and filtering that aim to enhance accuracy and efficiency; this helps standardize alarm configuration and automate work order response, but development of these systems is difficult and the O&M burden is heavy.

More input should be given to enhance the alarm report & handling mechanisms; this would also enable automatic analysis and work order dispatch. In this context, we have standardized alarm names, descriptions, and the handling mechanism as well. Alarm compression rules are also now pre-defined so that invalid alarms are filtered out; with the reduced workload, maintenance becomes less haphazard and more orderly.

Standardized test functionality

Based on the function, application scenario, and target involved, we can carry out PON testing during and after service launch. Mid-service launch testing encompasses comparative configurations and configuration progress, with services launched upon completion. These tests are meant to prevent problems such as data configuration errors and fiber breaks.

Post-launch issues primarily include equipment/network errors, fiber failures, service malfunctions, and terminal faults. Post-launch testing generally focuses on user-complaint handling, configuration comparison, fault diagnosis & testing, and post-troubleshooting verification.

We defined specific testing rules for the PON EMS, including link information query, one-key automatic testing, and item-specific testing. Other rules have also been defined for testing that cover port activation/deactivation, wideband & narrowband 112 internal/external line testing, incoming/outgoing VoIP simulation, port performance monitoring, and optical-fiber link testing.

With their integrated access, PON devices yield complex and diversified configuration data that is nearly impossible to verify manually. In this context, PON EMS must be used for checking and comparison of configuration data, operating status, and network values for OLTs, ONUs, and the EMS itself, for which we have predicted values based on two categories of both maintenance and service configuration items.

Cloud-based PON EMS

Current PON management sy s tems are generally local/remote backup systems, distributed architecture systems, or integrated into a single system. Therefore, PON expansion may overload the EMS. China Telecom usually divides systems geographically, with the expanded capacity generally meaning an increased number of servers and enhanced O&M complexity.

China Telecom’s various provincial branches have adopted EMS equipment from different vendors, which vary by overall architecture, server design, database layout and operating system. This can lead to complex management, higher costs, and poor resource sharing.

We need a centralized PON EMS that facilitates central management. A cloud-based PON EMS would be one possible avenue. Small-scale cloud

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 64

Huawei Communicate

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technologies are already commercially proven, while a large-scale solution would most likely include the following.

Private-cloud EMS

Vendors can upgrade their legacy PON EMS software and hardware to better facilitate centralized management. Separate modules can be utilized for critical functions and resource-intensive activities such as data collection & backup; in this context, the solution would consist of one or more sets of basic EMS servers, plus multiple independent modules for performance analysis, data backup, service provisioning, and other functions.

Shared-cloud EMS

Besides compatibility with various hardware resources, the shared-cloud EMS would require standardized IT infrastructure and virtualized technologies, while EMS resources would be managed and relocated in a unified manner. Specifically, the solution would require an EMS hardware resource pool that accommodates CPUs, memory, hard drives, and network ports. Vendors could use these pooled resources as required to establish a virtual environment, such as VMware’s virtual machine, to meet our needs.

EMS application clouds

After operators build a cloud-based PON EMS, they will no longer require network management software; instead, vendors would need only provide plug-ins that follow the southbound interface specifications, which would enable loose coupling between the EMS and other equipment.

In addition, software would not be dependent on general hardware, or even a specific device. Through unified northbound interfaces for the EMS, operators could integrate their hardware resources, which would simplify IT O&M and enhance efficiency. For large-capacity PON EMS, this solution would help enhance computing capability, security and reliability.

EMS evolution to cloud architecture will be a long-term process involving a large number of obstacles, including EMS restructuring and industry chain immaturity. Operators should move more quickly from the private cloud to the application cloud. With a maturing industry chain, cloud-based EMS is surely the way forward.

Editor: Xu Ping [email protected]

Experts’ Forum

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 647 8

China Mobileeliminates IP O&M challenges

By Kong Lingshan

China Mobile operates the world’s largest IP backbone network, serving the world’s largest subscriber base. Its experiences provide a reference for worldwide carriers looking to resolve their network maintenance problems during the IP transition.


JAN 2012 . ISSUE 64

Huawei Communicate

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hina Mobi le , the wor ld’s l a rges t mobile carrier, began its transition to IP architecture in 2004; since then, the operator has transformed its long-

distance telephone network infrastructure to IP. In 2006, it started developing an IP-based transport network, as well as IP-based end offices for local voice service, followed three years later by large-scale deployment of IP-based mobile backhaul infrastructure. As of today, it has built the world’s largest IP-based backbone network.

This transformation has yielded a slew of new technical innovations, but it has also brought as many new O&M challenges. Fortunately, these challenges are not unique, making the collective wisdom of the industry applicable.

NE-layer challenges

One major hindrance lies in the traditionally manual in-band network management methods tha t l a ck the re l i ab i l i t y demanded by IP architecture. Common faults such as equipment unmanageability take more than an hour to resolve, while repair, replacement, and software upgrade need to be carried out on site, which is inefficient, costly, and worsening, as service volumes for each single network element (NE) are increasing in the IP era. Taken together, these problems point to a greater need for centralized O&M.

Another key hurdle is the IP alarm system, where a single warning in a lower layer will result in a multitude in the upper layers, while failure of a single NE may result in a plethora of warnings across the network, thanks to the much greater interlayer correlation for IP architecture. Thus, the warnings that point to the root alarm tend to be drowned out by the subsequent false alarms.

C The lack of an SDH OAM equivalent for IP architecture also hinders an engineer’s ability to ferret out the original alarms, as performance drops may go unnoticed until the system finally breaks down.

Network-layer challenges

IP networks generally use dynamic routing protocols, which greatly enhance their adaptability and disaster tolerance but make maintenance extraordinarily complex, as a single network flaw may snowball into total network paralysis. In 2007, a certain IP bearer network endured large-scale route flapping where 80 percent of PE node CPU resources were eventually exhausted due to repeated calculation of route updates. Services were severely affected, and three days were wasted locating the root problem, thanks to a dearth of analysis methods. In 2010, on the same network, IDC addresses were occupied to a much greater extent, but it would still take more than two hours to locate a problematic route, as route changes were invisible, leading to a lot of irate subscribers.

The t remendous growth in the number o f protoco l s fur ther compl ica te s network management. China Mobile is using twenty wireless and core network protocols, sixteen more than it had before, while its IP-based bearer network protocols are also in the double digits. Signaling protocols are also vastly different than before, as the same protocol can now be used for multiple interfaces and applications. As for IP-based protocols, the rules may be simpler, but management is more complex.

There is also a current lack of end-to-end (E2E) management measures, thanks to the sheer speed at which IP networks are growing, in size,

Dr. Kong Lingshan is the Vice Director of Network Monitoring Sector of the Network Department at China Mobile Group. He is a major contributor to the Group’s IP-bearer network architecture, routing and security policies, as well as its QoS certifications.

Experts’ Forum

JAN 2012 . ISSUE 649 10

capacity, and number of routes. The number of network nodes has increased a hundred fold, while the capacity of a single node has ballooned from the gigabyte to the terabyte range. Thanks to virtualization technologies such as VPN, a physical network can encompass numerous logicals.

Service-layer challenges

China Mobile offered only nine basic services and seven supplements in 2002; it provided eighteen value-added voice services five years later. Today, it provides seventy value-added services for data alone. With the Internet of Things already starting to take shape, a new wave of services will soon flood the market. In all this, it will be hard for any operator, even one of China Mobile’s size, to differentiate them.

There is also a lack of E2E quality-of-service (QoS) indicators for IP architecture, thanks to complexities such as statistical multiplexing and forwarding whenever possible. This is true even in the case of high-margin enterprise services.

Here’s what we do

The aforementioned challenges and problems can only be resolved through better support of the NE, network and service layers. At the NE layer,

the traditional command line interface (CLI) based management mode is no longer suitable for carrier-level O&M requirements. Visibility and O&M efficiency improvement are critical.

China Mobile has made overal l network equipment performance, resources, and operating status visible through its monitoring/control system for IP bearer network service volume & performance, which centralizes the display of various indicators and status information into a chart similar to a dashboard, enabling intuitive monitoring/control and statistical analysis.

To prevent network faults such as equipment unmanageability, China Mobile has built an out-of-band network management system which operates each network device through its own console port and is thus free from the influence of bearer network faults. After implementation of this system, the total annual duration of faults has been reduced by more than 17 hours, including a 110-minute reduction in serious faults; this amounts to an onsite maintenance reduction of 690 man-hours.

China Mobile has optimized its warning analysis rules and compressed the 250,000 daily traps from its IP bearer network into different categories, thereby reducing the average daily number of important warnings to 591 from more than 1,100. In addition, China Mobile has optimized trouble ticket distribution, reducing its daily tally from 25 to 2.7.


After implementation of the out-of-band NMS, the total average duration of faults per year has been reduced by more than 17 hours, including a 10-minute reduction in serious faults; this amounts to an onsite maintenance reduction of 690 man-hours.

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At the network layer, China Mobile has been focusing on developing a support system and traffic control mechanism that visualizes routing, displays indicators, and carries out quality tests.

A route analysis system can alleviate the route invisibility burden that stems from dynamic portal utilization. The entire network requires only a single ‘listener’ that perceives route changes in real time. Thus, engineers can control/manage network traffic, flow direction, and route release rules according to the information collected by the listener.

Route analysis can reveal abnormal conditions and hazards in the control layer, while statistical analysis of warnings and performance can be done for different paths to provide a foundation for network optimization. The route analysis system is able to record every route change in real time, and such changes at different times can be compared through the playback function to recreate certain faults.

In terms of traffic control at the network layer, there are a variety of measures available. A traffic control support system can divert as much traffic as possible to intra-network access, which would enable control by time and flow direction for different services, especially low-value traffic such as P2P services,

Building smart pipes promotes tiered Internet management, which allows premium assurances for high-value services while traffic distribution

improves through the implementation of traffic control rules. China Mobile has compiled a complete set of traffic control support measures, which has enabled a level of traffic control that could be described as refined.

As for the service layer, China Mobile has built a comprehensive service assurance system, thereby shifting the traditional NE-oriented O&M methodology to a service-centric model.

Since IP technology itself lacks the requisite Q o S t e s t i n g m e a s u r e s , s u c h t e s t i n g a n d monitoring/control can be done only through a dial-test system for emulated services. Probes deployed alongside network equipment can initiate such emulated service tests for voice, video, and Internet access services, as well as for IP networks. For Internet access, China Mobile has created an E2E customer perception system along with support instruments that cover four assessment dimensions – services, networks, contents, and terminals. Quantified indicators reflect real-world customer perceptions, while service dial testing can be carried out across the entire network. This system has enabled the launching of an innovative, rapid fault-scope narrowing & location model that alerts the operator to quality drops far more quickly than before, while the relevant multipath warning information is analyzed so that faults are traced down in a timely fashion.

Editor: Cao Zhuihui [email protected]

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‘Steering Wheel’ keeps operation & maintenance on course

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KPN: Efficient OTN integration, accelerated business growth

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‘Steering Wheel’ for ultra-broadband network operation

hanks to the boom in network demand and the resulting services meant to accommodate it, operators are facing increased O&M burdens. Operators need to innovate and deliver their services in a timely and economic fashion so that users

don’t bolt for cable companies or smaller competitors. In light of this, time to market (TTM), quality of experience (QoE), and OPEX are now an operator’s top-3 O&M priorities.

Huawei offers a simple and efficient solution for ultra-broadband O&M. Dubbed ‘Steering Wheel,’ this solution helps operators build establish, operate, transfer (EOT) capability based on product lifecycle, enhancing TTM/QoE while reducing OPEX. Steering Wheel has enabled Dutch carrier KPN to reduce its service TTM from 60 to 25 days, while cutting millions from its costs.

T

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JAN 2012 . ISSUE 6413 14

The modified process needed to decrease costs (TCO), improve average delivery time (from over 60 days) and achieve a better first time right (FTR). The FTR between KPN’s partner/subcontractor and Huawei was only 60%, meaning that 40% of the delivered lines required several visits before they could be considered finished. KPN analyzed the business delivery process and found inefficiencies to stem primarily from two aspects.

Lengthy process and lack of uniform quality control

KPN received business demands from customers, while the design department carried out demand analysis, created a business design and then submitted the design results to the manufacturer. The manufacturer generated detailed configuration lists based on business design results and submitted them to KPN for approval. After approval, KPN returned the list to the manufacturer for engineering design. When the engineering design was completed, the results were returned to KPN for approval

oyal Dutch Telecom (here inafter referred to as KPN) is the leading telecommunications and ICT service provider in the Netherlands, offering

wireline and wireless telephony, Internet and TV to consumers, while providing end-to-end telecom and ICT services to business customers. On December 31st, 2010, KPN served over 42.2 million customers from Spain to France, accounting for EUR13.4 billion in yearly revenue and an EBITDA of EUR5.5 billion.

Challenges to business development

In order to grow new business and reduce costs when delivering private lines and xWDM lines for internal customers, KPN wanted to change the existing business delivery process. KPN was looking to peel off some non-core activities and outsource them to equipment vendors or third-party services.

Efficient OTN integration, accelerated business growth

By Zhu Zhaohui

R

KPN: Efficient OTN integration, accelerated business growth

KPN

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once again. Once KPN approved, the manufacturers prepared the equipment and shipped it to the site; the equipment would then be constructed and installed by a number of service providers specified by KPN. When the installation was completed, the manufacturer would commission and deliver the data lines. Finally, after acceptance, KPN would inform the customer that the requested data lines were working successfully. The entire process involved back & forth between a minimum of four companies (including KPN), totaling at least 16 steps. The entire process was also very cumbersome and had a long cycle. There were no uniform quality evaluation criteria for the different companies, causing a low FTR for the various process handovers to the parties involved.

Lengthy design process

KPN’s transmission network consists primarily of OTN equipment. With the rapid development of OTN and other leading technologies, the equipment features and network structure have become increasingly complex, making the business design of OTN-based networking very complex. Designs were sent back and forth several times, which led to the long delivery times for each project and customer dissatisfaction. KPN found the evaluation criteria for business design results, based on OTN, to be ineffective because there were no clear order criteria. When mismatches between customer demands and proposed designs were found during the final delivery, re-design and re-delivery additionally stretched the delivery cycle.

Streamlined delivery, improved processes

KPN considered the keys to business process improvement to be comprehensive protection of OTN design quality, streamlining of the overall operational process, and shortening of the delivery steps. The most appropriate method for going about this is to carry out a re-sorting of the business end-to-end delivery organization by experts who are very familiar with the characteristics and design principles of OTN equipment and who have uniform quality KPIs and monitoring processes. The organization begins from the receiving of customer business needs until the completion of the delivery of the data lines – end-to-end delivery with high quality and efficiency. In order to establish such an organization, KPN needed to improve the processes which would enhance KPN’s operating costs and meet KPN’s development strategy.

Streamlining end-to-end operational processes

This optimization of the original KPN process leads to its division into planning & design, deployment installation, and validation & acceptance – all the three stages of the process are executed by the same organization, as well as process quality management which reduces the number of handovers. Huawei is the leading OTN equipment provider in the global market and has rich experiences in OTN network

By implementing the solutions, the efficiency and quality of KPN’s service provision have been significantly enhanced. FTR has increased from 60% to 90%, while the average delivery time has decreased from more than 60 days to 25 days.

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construction and service provision, including a very good quality management system which enables the effective establishment and implementation of the process. The planning and design activities in the front of the process used to be completed by KPN; to ensure the design result quality, the proposed new process suggested that KPN use Huawei’s OTN planning and design services.

Professional OTN design services

These services combine years of Huawei WDM/OTN network construction experience and Huawei’s OTN equipment features, and are able to support a variety of scenarios for design activities. They can design based on OTN protection mechanisms and meet different business reliability requirements. So, it could help KPN build a network which meets the various needs of customer businesses.

These services can be combined with the existing network data and business design requirements, with end-to-end planning and design, in order to maximize the use of KPN network resources. They give detailed network configuration and delivery guidance throughout the planning process and greatly reduce the difficulties of subsequent delivery, eventually enhancing the FTR and the delivery efficiency.

The service delivery team has experience with optical and digital communication technology and a proficient background in OTN equipment. The team is experienced, as it has been involved in numerous large-scale OTN network projects. The experts in the team are able to identify whether the design result is reasonable and can guarantee the delivery quality of KPN projects.

Since Huawei’s E2E OTN integration services solution is the most appropriate to solve the problems with service provisioning that KPN was facing at the time, KPN selected Huawei as its business partner and started improving its efficiency and quality.

The first step has been to streamline the process, including adjustment of the KPN organization. For KPN, the major change was to its design team. All business design activities are now delivered by using Huawei’s OTN design services. Eight designers from KPN team have joined Huawei’s design team. In the new process, a Huawei delivery service team deals with warehouse management, installation, commissioning & testing, business fulfillment, monitoring and project management processes.

The second step has been the implementation of Huawei’s OTN design services. In the service

implementation, the service delivery engineers introduce the professional planning tool as a design platform. Engineers get the existing network data from the NMS via the planning tool and generate the business matrix according to the external business requirements, which are then imported into the planning tool, thus ensuring well-prepared data before the design begins. When using the tools for the first step of design, the engineers add their own experience and manually optimize the design results in the tool. This step is very important, as the design results from the tool are more rigid and cannot fully meet the demands of OTN configuration flexibility and variety of combinations of design scenarios. By adding the expert experience, the rationality of the design result can be improved.

The last step is to correctly pass the front-end design results to the follow-up link by professional tools. After design is completed, the planning tool can generate detailed configuration data lists and engineering drawings. Through the configuration data lists, engineers can output quotation and invoice list and send the equipment and accessories to the site; the onsite engineers check the materials, depending on the configuration list, and install the devices in accordance with engineering drawings. After the installation is finished, engineers import the design results into the NMS and commissioning tools for commissioning and commercial launch. When the lines are delivered, engineers transfer them to KPN for management and operation.

The deep integration of the expertise of service delivery engineers and tools during the entire business process ensures a high quality of delivery and also enhances the delivery efficiency.

Significant effects

By implementing Huawei’s services solutions, the efficiency and quality of service provision have been significantly enhanced. FTR has increased from 60% to 90%, while the average delivery time has decreased from more than 60 days to 25 days, which promotes KPN business development. Efficiency improvements help KPN to solve the inventory problems caused by the long lead delivery times. Reducing the scope of work on the KPN side optimizes KPN human resources input. Eventually, the new program has helped KPN to improve TCO and achieve considerable annual OPEX savings.

KPN: High-efficiency OTN integration, accelerated business growth

Editor: Pan Tao [email protected]

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ndependent networks that deliver a modest number of services are going the way of the dinosaur. Fully-integrated, future-proof networks are in demand, as they are expected

to reduce deployment and O&M costs and enable service expansion & terminal diversity. However, as network architecture converges, the importance of O&M grows, as a single failure will affect a greater percentage of ever more fickle users.

TTM, QoE and OPEX are three key metrics that must be optimal if operators are to compete in an ever more demanding landscape. To optimize them, Huawei has launched Steering Wheel, a solution that simplifies and enhances the O&M process for ultra-broadband architecture. With its established EOT capability, this solution can help operators keep these three metrics competitive throughout the entire network lifecycle.

Shortened TTM

Three obstacles hinder TTM in ultra-broadband scenarios. First, network planning and design requires experience and professionalism, both from engineers and their tools. Yet, network planning is still often done manually; this can take up seventy percent of an engineer’s time. Second, operators are constantly pressured to deploy more base stations, which makes service and terminal launching ever more onerous. Third, new services often exceed the grasp of legacy infrastructure; O&M system upgrade can take almost a year to match a new service, which is a lifetime in today’s competitive environment.

Huawei works with the TMF to promote the


By Ren Xudong

Esta

blis

h Operate

Transfer

TTM

QoE OPEX

I multi-technology operations system interface (MTOSI) standard, while its 300+ network planning exper ts have exper ience in every environment on the planet, giving it the knowledge and the means to provide OSS integration service to help shorten any operator’s TTM.

Huawei Steering Wheel encompasses a large number of professional tools and services that accelerate and enhance the reliability of network planning. This solution helps operators generate scripts quickly and deploy equipment in a plug-and-play fashion, without the need for software commissioning. It a lso deploys

TTM, QoE and OPEX are three key metrics that must be optimal if operators are to compete in an ever more demanding landscape.

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independent fiber channel for data communication network (DCN). Steering Wheel enabled DTAC (Thailand) to deploy 800 sites in three weeks, a 400% increase in efficiency over the previous mark.

A key component of Steering Wheel is the U2000 NMS, which provides an open northbound interface that accommodates a variety of access methods.

Better QoS

Quality of service (QoS) often does not correlate with traditional KPIs, a fact that many operators have learned the hard way; this can be traced to three causes.

First, service rollout is often ad hoc and reactive. The operator mindset often is “Operator X has IPTV, so we’ll have it too.” However, no two networks are the same. Operator Y may need to make some major modifications to its infrastructure before it can compete with Operator X, but the patience needed for such a move often evaporates when margins are eroding.

Huawei statistics show that 70 percent of network errors are closely related to improper early-stage planning. Second, operators lack an E2E QoS assurance mechanism to ensure user experience. Though network quality may be good at each

network layer, QoE degradation can still occur during transitions. Finally, service quality may relate to multiple departments; responsibility often becomes a hot potato when customer complaints arise.

Huawei has rolled out a number of solutions to address these three issues. It offers an assessment service that aides the evaluation of network readiness in three aspects. First , i t assesses equipment functions and defines baselines. Second, it assesses the reliability and security of network architecture and defines performance baselines so that service growth targets are realistic. Finally, it assesses network capacity and gives suggestions if upgrade is needed.

This solution also helps collect data from various vendors’ equipment and delivers analysis reports, while the Huawei AMS5080 software collects and presents topology information in a variety of fashions.

Based on TMF standards, Huawei has developed a service evaluation mechanism that combines KPI, KQI and QoE. With service quality defined by both Huawei and its partners, the mechanism can help visual ize QoE, which reduces the troubleshooting time from hours to minutes.

Faults in legacy infrastructure often escape an operator’s notice until complaints start rolling in, but with Huawei, faults can be located within

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minutes. Huawei also helps operators determine the layer in which a fault occurs (service or network). For a network error, operators can further trace the fault to the next layer (access, terminal, metro or other), which helps determine the department responsible.

Reduced OPEX

Operators are facing higher OPEX thanks to higher spare part and maintenance costs for legacy infrastructure, but network migration can take months or even years, and an IP network will require an operator to double its maintenance staff. FTTx involves many network elements, such as ODN, that do not intelligently report data to the network management system; to ensure stable network operation, effort must be expended to maintain them.

Power consumption is also becoming an ever greater expense, regardless of the architecture in place. Time is also wasted thanks to a scarcity of proper O&M skills and tools among engineers; a large number of invalid fault reports can result from this.

Huawei offers an E2E bearer network solution to solve these problems. It helps operators analyze and evaluate their networks, while providing fast

& accurate network design through simulation tools that detect and eliminate potential problems. Its DSLAM chipsets and E2E energy-saving mechanisms also reduce energy consumption by twenty-five percent.

The U2000 NMS can suppress and combine alarms, helping operators focus on the critical ones. To reduce packet losses, Huawei routers have built-in network quality assurance (NQA) detection functionality, which performs real-time checking of packets transferred in layer 2 and layer 3. In addition, a snapshot function is provided to ensure normal operations on the control plane.

Other features include eID, an innovative technology that adds intelligent elements to ODN nodes; together with the ODN NMS and the iField assistant tool, operators can manage their ODN network flexibly. Fault detection has also been made easy, as the solution can smoothly interact with management systems for equipment, terminals, and optical line system (OLS) and ODN infrastructure, providing integrated fault diagnosis for network equipment, lines, terminals and resources.

Huawei’s EOT service and Steering Wheel solutions are ready to help operators shorten their TTM, enhance QoE, and lower OPEX, giving them a competitive edge in ultra-broadband.

Editor: Pan Tao [email protected]

Huawei’s “establish, operate, transfer” (EOT) service and Steering Wheel solutions are ready to help operators shorten their time-to-market, enhance QoE, and lower OPEX, giving them a competitive edge in ultra-broadband.

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OPI

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Sharp traffic increases pose the question of how

to turn dumb pipes into smart ones; efficient ODN

deployment and intelligent ASON are the keys.

19 20


Common bottlenecks

uring FTTB and FTTH deployment, ODNs typ ica l ly employ P2MP (point-to-multiple-point) topology, as opposed to the simpler P2P (point-

to-point) structure of their copper counterparts. With P2MP, split ratios and splitter locations greatly impact the total investment, thus requiring much more sophisticated planning & design. ODN deployment is also characterized by heavy engineering workloads and greater demands on project management. As fiber is more sensitive than copper, and more connection points are involved, the former is more prone to errors during construction, making ODN testing necessary before project acceptance.

Planning/design: Inefficient & error-prone

Field surveys are necessary after bandwidth models and access scenarios are determined as they help verify information for thousands of households by collecting and entering bulk data related to central office location, outdoor fiber distribution terminal location, ducting, and line

D

Smartening your pipes24

Planning your way to ASON viability27

ODN deployment made easy20

resource distribution.AutoCAD, as opposed to dedicated ODN-

design software, is now used for most of these projects, making it impossible to effectively use an operator’s existing resource data or GIS (geographic information system) information; thus, planning/design efficiency is low. For a certain ODN project involving 150,000 lines, despite GIS map availability, planning engineers still had to draw their maps & cabling routes using AutoCAD while calculating the optical power budget manually. The planning/design work was consequently completed about three months behind schedule, while a data error rate of about 3% was introduced through the aforementioned manual work while an additional 2% stemmed from manual entry of design data into the system. These errors made themselves known during deployment as certain elements had to be reworked.

Deployment without quality assurance

Optical fiber, which is thinner than human hair and less yielding than copper, demands great skill during the connection process; first attempts are often unsuccessful. To make things worse, checking & acceptance (C&A) on a single-line basis is onerous and tricky; a lack of viable batch C&A

The optical distribution network (ODN) is an essential FTTx element, accounting for 60 to 70% of an operator’s total FTTx investment. Considering the massive CAPEX involved, ODN deployment facilitators are in demand.

By Xie Liansheng

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measures certainly doesn’t help, either the effort involved or the cost. As a result, C&A for most projects fails to fully comply with related processes as mere sample tests or even no tests are carried out, leaving engineering troubleshooting for the service provisioning phase.

I n a d d i t i o n , a l l n e t w o r k d e p l o y m e n t information is entered into the resource database manually. After several individual construction tasks are carried out, information in the resource database may not be updated promptly, which may affect follow-up network operation & maintenance (O&M); a Huawei study of over ten operators shows an average ODN resource data error rate of about 20%.

Inadequate project management capabilities

O D N d e p l oy m e n t i n vo l v e s n u m e ro u s complex processes, including survey, design, civil engineering, duct laying, fiber laying & connection, indoor cabling, and C&A. Moreover, there are tight time constraints on the right-of-way (ROW) and home access.

As a result, key project team members, including the manager and planning engineers, must have extensive experience in large-scale network building and project management. However, such personnel

are difficult to attract. Novices will have difficulty identifying critical project paths early, meaning that subsequent planning and division of work may not be done properly; they may also struggle with monitoring/control over task progress, risk identification, and timely adjustment during project implementation.

Enhanced design/plan efficiency & quality

To address bottlenecks and other problems with large-scale ODN deployment, Huawei has introduced its one-stop ODN integration service solution, which features a full set of standardized integration processes, as well as rapid, high-quality, end-to-end (E2E) delivery capabilities.

Based on the industry-leading GIS platform (Esri ArcGIS), Huawei launched the MDS6690 professional ODN planning/design software in 2011. Utilizing global GIS maps and online map platforms, MDS6690 features OLT, ODN, and MxU planning/design functionality. Planning engineers may import both GIS maps and existing network information so that design can be carried out in a more cartographic manner. In addition, the design software supports optical fiber routing, automatic display of vertical and horizontal


To address bottlenecks and other problems with large-scale ODN deployment, Huawei has introduced its one-stop ODN integration service solution, which features a full set of standardized integration processes, as well as rapid, high-quality, end-to-end (E2E) delivery capabilities.

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building structures, and automatic E2E link-loss calculation.

The MDS6690 imports batch survey data along with data flows for construction and C&A; it also aligns design results with operators’ resource management systems. It starts from planning/design and continues through the data chain over the entire ODN deployment process, thereby eliminating potential manual data entry errors at every step.

The MDS6690 also automatically generates various planning and design schemes that planning engineers can select, based on cost and network scalability. For a certain project in Southeast Asia, the MDS6690 enabled a 53% work efficiency increase for planning engineers over AutoCAD, while eliminating manual data entry errors.

Fast & efficient deployment

Huawei’s ODN solution not only adopts advanced cabling techniques such as micro trenching and air-blown microcabling/ducting, but it also facilitates intelligent ODN optical-fiber management and ODN batch C&A.

Microtrenching – Fiber is laid in a shallow and narrow groove cut into a concrete or asphalt road surface, which makes the process timely, economical and discreet.

Air blown microcabling/ducting – Micro ducts form the infrastructure into which the fiber units are blown. This technique reduces upfront costs while enabling more efficient installation and scalability. However, preparation can be time-consuming and the overall costs are high. This technique is suitable when straight-line cabling distances between feeder and optical distribution sections exceed 1km.

Intelligent ODN optical-fiber management – Intelligent management is achieved by adding eID tag connectors and adapters to standard LC fiber connectors. Each eID number is 64-bit, ensuring unique identification on a global scale. Connector information and equipment ID are also included in the eID tag.

Huawei’s iODN solution allows engineers to receive instruction sets from the MDS6690 planning/design tool through iField, a professional installation aid tool. Later, at the construction site, engineers can efficiently finish engineering implementation simply by connecting the iField to the iODN equipment via USB and then following the subsequent LED prompts.

After construction is completed, iField can be used to generate engineering confirmation sheets; it will automatically gather connection relationships and port states to determine whether or not instructions have been followed. It will also

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automatically upload engineering confirmation documents to MDS6690, which will then refresh the relevant design data, saving time & effort and ensuring accuracy. During project handover, MDS6690 design data may be imported into the operator’s resource management systems and the U2000-O (the iODN network management system), which guarantees the accuracy of resource data sources.

Batch C&A – Multiple fiber links can undergo C&A at a single instance while OTDR tests and planning/design can be checked automatically. This method is highly efficient and accurate, and also makes data-link C&A feasible and cost-effective.

Huawei offers an intel l igent ODN C&A tool that combines hardware and software. The software is installed on a PC or notebook while the hardware is comprised of OTDR and optical switches. Engineers can import design data into this tool and carry it to the site. They can then connect multiple optical fibers simultaneously and test them in batches using the software. This tool will automatically compare the OTDR test results and design data for every link, while importing data such as optical fiber length & link loss and automatically generating reports. Efficiency for ODN C&A can be increased 3 to 5 fold using this tool, while the engineer involved need no longer be senior.

Delivery team professionalism is critical

To ensure timely and effective delivery of ODN integration service project, the delivery team needs to consider all the relevant factors, including the project’s scope, duration, and risks. A dedicated delivery team is required for every ODN project; it should consist of a project manager, account manager, planning engineer, implementation manager, site engineer, materials administrator, documentation controller, and implementation engineer. Work responsibilities and boundaries need to be clearly defined to better facilitate coordination between the different roles.

Huawei has more than 300 profess ional delivery managers, while its subcontractors are distributed worldwide. It also has more than a decade of experience in turnkey services and ODN deployment. Its ODN integration services have been utilized commercially by more than 50 operators worldwide, including Telefónica, Etisalat, Qtel, Maxis, and Vodafone Ghana. Huawei can customize its integration solutions to specific customer requirements and scenarios, and continuously improve the relevant service processes and tools, which enhances the delivery capabilities o f i t s exper t t eams and reduces cus tomer investment.

In a project carried out with Maxis, a Malaysian operator, Huawei doubled the design efficiency

for the operator’s engineers by introducing its professional planning/design software.

In another project with Etisalat, it only took Huawei half a year to

successfully cover 80% of Abu Dhabi’s households. Thanks

to iODN, both operators managed to increase their

competitiveness, both in terms of brand and market.

Editor: Li Xuefeng [email protected]


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Smartening your pipesSharp traffic increases, facilitated by mobile broadband, pose new challenges for the traditional pipe operational model. Monetization and management are the issues of the day for operators, as is the question of how to turn dumb pipes into smart ones.

By Ma Lin

Pipes: Gold mine or dry well?he Internet industry has a plethora of key players at every link in the chain, from content to terminal, except one, the pipe access, which is where carriers lie. Carriers

have long prioritized pipe building and operation, but their pipe-only operating mode has led to volume growth without revenue growth. With Internet services (mobile & fixed) growing, carriers are under pressure to either expand or better utilize network bandwidth. Nonetheless, they are suffering a serious imbalance between CAPEX and revenue.

The pipe-only model threatens to turn carriers into mere utility providers. However, pipes remain one of the few footholds that the carrier has in the real world; carriers need to either monetize what

flows through them or make the pipes themselves more valuable. Operators can do the former, but not all carriers are operators; these particular carriers must do the latter by smartening their pipes.

What makes them smart?For pipes to be smart, the network must serve

the needs of service development. The rapid growth of high-definition (HD) video streaming, mobile Internet, and other services is driving the expansion of network pipes, but increased bandwidth, in and of itself, does not increase pipe value; smart pipes should increase their own value by better facilitating services and enhancing the user experience.

A smart pipe network, like a complex organism,

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must respond and adapt; daily work and life are only possible through the coordination and collaboration of all organs and systems. Current networks already have numerous smart elements, but they have yet to be properly leveraged. They are largely uncoordinated, resulting in a lack of correlation between the network and its applications.

Smart pipes can tap and supplement the capabil i t ies of exist ing networks, enabling collaboration and support between networks and services and ultimately enhancing network value through subscriber identification, service differentiation, network management systems, and traffic control.

The f irst step to building smart pipes is optimizing the smart features of existing pipes; this might include improving QoS, optimizing traffic, ensuring QoE, and visualizing operation & maintenance (O&M) processes. New capabilities must then be added, such as network visualization and resource allocation control. But, before any of this can begin, a carrier must understand what makes a pipe smart.

First, a smart pipe must be flexible. Flexible resource allocation forms the core of any smart pipe. The allocation of resources demanded by subscribers, services, and the network itself must be based on a converged fixed-mobile network resource management platform so that there is no wastage or idling.

F l e x i b l e r e s o u r c e a l l o c a t i o n r e q u i r e s collaboration and interaction between service platforms, resource management platforms, and network equipment; critical technologies include PCC and RACF. Flexibility in service access is also crucial, as carriers must provide subscribers with seamless and flexible access to fixed and/or mobile broadband service through any possible access method, whether it be PC, STB, tablet, smartphone, or dongle.

A smart pipe must also be clearly visualized. However, this cannot involve an encyclopedic display of every possible piece of data; the variables that are critical to enhanced value must be prioritized. These might include user account, terminal type, physical location, service type, and experience requirements.

QoS differentiation is also an essential feature, as it is the ultimate goal of most carrier investment activities. Most carriers have a head start in this area, as they realize that tiered service is essentially what separates carriers from utilities. Users

Smartening your pipes

cannot order scented water that flows at a higher temperature, but they can order higher data ceilings and more personalized services.

Thus far, carr iers have not been able to differentiate QoS in a comprehensive manner. A carrier can offer a subsidized iPhone and a theoretically unlimited data ceiling, but coverage gaps, signal surges, data throttling, and hindrance by bandwidth hogs still keep subscribers from feeling truly served.

Finally, a smart pipe requires network openness, as it is a prerequisite for carriers to monetize their pipes. By optimizing existing integrated service platforms, network resources and the assurance thereof can be given to third-party SPs/CPs through open APIs, which will enable carriers to tap into new opportunities for revenue growth. Network openness is essential to competition and the resultant building of a healthy industry chain.

Smart pipes: A three-step process

A smart pipe network cannot be built overnight; the process is more evolution than revolution; op t imiza t ion and modi f i c a t ion o f l egacy infrastructure should be done step-by-step.

First, fixed (fiber) and mobile access must be

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integrated and accelerated. However, the latter must be done in a true end-to-end manner; otherwise, it is not really done at all. High-capacity network elements such as OLT, BRAS/SR, OTN, and CR must be utilized to realize this.

The next step involves the smartening of the network itself. This will involve the coordination of the smart elements already present on the network such as its QoS and QoE features.

It will also involve static configurations that enable differentiated services for homes and businesses, as well as provisioning of CPs/SPs with network QoS assurance through DAA configurat ion. As for the mobile Internet , differentiated services may be provided through PDSN capability optimization.

The last step will involve the building of the aforementioned network display elements and resource allocation controls. While considering DPI deployment, carriers should analyze and reorganize displayed network data into a subscriber-centric information management database. Carriers must also add fixed and mobile network resource management platforms that enable subscribers to allocate network resources to themselves, which should greatly enhance QoE. However, this will necessitate the adding of DPI, PCC, RACF, and even network element (NE) equipment during this phase.

If these three steps are carried out successfully,

a carrier’s pipes will be congestion-free, flexibly-acces sed , opt imal ly -ut i l i zed , and ser v ice-differentiated. In other words, they will be smart. However, the story does not end there. An integrated resource management platform is needed so that users can enjoy multiscreen interactions and seamless roaming. When all of these things are in place, a truly smart ecosystem will come into being.

Outlook

Carriers have a long way to go when it comes to building smart pipes. Thus far, they have only made the first tentative steps in the right direction. Smart pipes will form the foundation for cloud-based pipes, which promise resource collaboration & sharing, as well as allocation-on-demand and increased network efficiency. However, each step in the development of smart pipes will change broadband subscribers’ experiences and habits, and these changes will be a little different for each market.

Carriers must be willing to change directions midstream to keep their “golden pipes” from becoming expensive baubles. This is why a stepwise transformation is crucial. If carriers can exercise both initiative and patience, they should stay profitable, no matter which way the data flows.

Editor: Li Xuefeng [email protected]

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Planning your way to ASON viability

raditional optical transport technologies, designed for TDM service transmission, cannot meet the needs of the data surge, which is where generalized multi-protocol

label switching (GMPLS) and ASON come in. ASON technology delivers the reliability, flexibility, and robustness that next-gen optical transport requires, while enabling service differentiation and reducing network construction and O&M costs.

As the starting point of any network, planning has the largest single impact on construction costs, reliability, and ease-of-maintenance; ASON is no exception.

ASON: Advantages & challenges

SLA diversity – ASON infrastructure enables service level agreement (SLA) differentiation, where different levels of services are granted different protections and resource allocations. However, their proper selection has proven challenging as the protection/investment ratio must be carefully considered.

Reliability – ASON infrastructure features automatic rerouting, where routes are selected based on user-predefined policies after a network fault, which ensures service accessibility as long as an alternative route is available. Fault tolerance is therefore greatly increased, but this requires ample resources that can enable reliably objective and

Planning your way to ASON viability

By Fu Bo

T effective verification. Reduced investment – ASON architecture is

primarily meshed, which endows node connectivity superior to that for ring/chain. ASON allows significantly more connectivity through maximized bandwidth sharing, making route solution critical during planning since small differences in this phase make huge differences in cost.

Four questions concerning ASON planning

Reliability, maintainability, scalability, and cost must be considered during network planning, as it is a cyclical process of planning, verification, and re-planning. Huawei has carried out roughly 100 WDM/SDH ASON deployments worldwide, accumulating a rich body of experience along the way; it is therefore able to offer a complete suite of ASON planning methods and relevant software, designed to help solve the various problems encountered during each phase.

Phase 1: Network structure & SLA selectionA network should be meshed whenever possible so

that ASON architecture is best leveraged. The number of optical directions at each node is determined based on network survival requirements. Each node should include at least three optical directions so that operation continues after optical-direction faults occur at any two points. Direct optical channels should also be designed between large-volume nodes whenever possible, so that transmission efficiency is guaranteed. SLA selection is primarily based on service reliability requirements.

ASON infrastructure enables a variety of SLA choices, including permanent 1+1, 1+1 SNCP, dynamic restoration, and none; their availabilities and restoration times are shown in Table 1.

Generally speaking, permanent 1+1 protection is recommended for key private line accounts, while 1+1 SNCP is suggested for general voice services, and dynamic restoration is typical for data service.

Table 1 Reliability and restoration time for certain SLAs

SLA Time to restore protection Service availability

Permanent 1+1 <50ms 99.999%

1+1 SNCP <50ms 99.99%

Dynamic restoration <2s 99.99%

No protection - 99.9%

Occupiable services - -

Transport networks are becoming more intelligent, but only rational network planning can effectively leverage the intelligence advantages of automatically-switched optical network (ASON) technology.

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Phase 2: Resource conservation

The planning phase focuses on service route selection and resource allocation. Traditional ring/chain topology offers few service routes, while ASON enables an exponential increase, thanks to its meshed architecture. However, this plethora of choices makes an optimal route difficult to determine.

Huawei offers an advanced route and resource allocation algorithm which calculates service routes and required resources based on user-defined conditions for network survivability, resource utilization, and route constraints. Comparison tests have shown that Huawei’s algorithm delivers 30% reduced costs over shortest-path (the most prevalent route algorithm). In addition, the transmission for analog-based WDM ASON systems is affected by optical performance. Huawei’s planning algorithm takes optical performance restrictions into consideration during route planning, as it will select paths with good optical performance to reduce the number of configured repeaters employed.

Phase 3: Cost reduction

The design phase focuses on equipment configuration, based on the resource requirements determined during the planning phase. ASON and traditional networks are configured quite differently, with REG configuration having the greatest effect on network cost. Regeneration boards in the electrical layer are expensive; they should be used as little as possible. The number of REGs can be reduced through service-restoration path sharing and regeneration board configuration by as many service restoration paths as possible. Network testing shows that Huawei’s algorithm can reduce the number of REGs by up to 20% compared with traditional configuration methods.

Phase 4: Network management

Like IP, ASON infrastructure is dynamic, as the network self-allocates resources and service routes. Operators must know whether or not a fault will lead to a service interruption, but testing an operating network is impossible. The complexities of ASON architecture also make manual calculation unfeasible; network emulation is the only answer. Huawei has developed an emulation software suite which includes algorithms that port the ASON control plan. The software can gather the network data from the network management system and simulate various fault scenarios so that engineers can

better understand service interruptions and post-fault resource distribution. The emulation software allows prediction of any potential fault, while enabling full control over the ASON.

Network reliability may worsen over time as new services are continuously launched; optimization, which can be considered network re-planning, is needed. First, the existing network must be assessed. Huawei offers a comprehensive assessment system, based on its aforementioned experiences, that determines network bottlenecks through systematic assessment of network resources/reliability and optical performance, and provides recommendations for improving network quality/performance.

ASON: An intelligent future

Huawei has built more than 70 WDM ASONs as of summer 2011, covering 40 carriers worldwide; this includes the international backbone networks for Telecom Italia, a national backbone network for Vodafone (Portugal), the backbone network for Telecom Egypt, the national backbone network for Bharti (India), and the backbone WDM ASON for China Telecom (Shaanxi).

These carriers generally face problems with long service provisioning periods, a limited number of service protection modes, and frequent service interruptions caused by aging fiber. Huawei helps through joint planning of the service matrix, network topology, and SLA, converging small-granularity bandwidths whenever possible and sharing protection resources among as many services as possible. This reduces network building costs, while service reliability reaches 99.999% through protection paths and preset reply paths which ensure service continuation after any two fiber connections break down. Huawei’s network emulation algorithm simulates both fiber and node faults, thereby encompassing all possible network abnormalities, which makes ASON infrastructure predictable and reduces the pressure on operation & maintenance (O&M) personnel.

All transport networks are smartening up, but only reasonable network planning can leverage the intelligence of ASON architecture. Planning algorithms and emulation technologies are critical for ASON planning, and Huawei is able to provide network planning and optimizing services based on them, so that the ASON for any operator is economical and competitive.

Editor: Cao Zhihui [email protected]

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For the telecom industry, network transformation is not a

singular event but a constant process, but it can be made easier

through refinement and collaboration with the right partners.

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China Unicom Shanghai: Devising strategies to bear the future

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ODN O&M: Manageable and easy33

IP network stewardship with Huawei30

IP network stewardship with HuaweiBy Ayush Sharma

n any business , new technologies are ideally meant to reduce costs, but this logic is on the verge of breaking down in the telecommunications field. The fancy

smartphones that carriers subsidize are now drowning their own networks in a deluge of data.

LTE rollouts will soon put carriers back above water, if they haven’t already, but these victories may be short-lived. More infrastructure will be needed, and it cannot be paid for through the mere piping of 1’s and 0’s. Services are needed, and some of the ones now offered are real dazzlers; but if their rollout is not smooth and timely, they may never turn a profit.

Facing hindrances

The launches of certain services such as high-speed broadband and IPTV have often furnished a lackluster experience involving intermittent service, ineffective maintenance, and overall mediocrity. When this occurs, these services can fall into a sort of no-man’s land that is hard to escape from as upgrade investments are hard to justify in the face of an apathetic public.

An operator may face three types of hindrances to the monetization of their latest & greatest products and services. The first is basically a poor quality of experience (QoE) stemming from technological ineptitude prior to and during launch; the many issues relating to IPTV often fall under this rubric.

The second is a tech upgrade put into place without proper consideration of how to make money off of it; a premature LTE launch would be an example here, seeing as the issues of terminal compatibility (TDD/FDD), roaming, and battery life have yet to be resolved. The third hindrance is basically timing. Figuring out the time to launch a product or service that best capitalizes on consumer buzz can be a real crapshoot, while waiting for your next doodad to be perfected can be equally risky. Think about Windows Phone if you need a reminder. The critics have largely hailed it as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it has elicited yawns from American carriers and industry pundits, who view the mobile OS game strictly as a two-horse race.

A more telco-oriented gamble might be Sprint’s seemingly belated decision to get into the iPhone game late last year, a move which prompted investors to grab their torches & pitchforks. However, iPhone 4S sales since then have proven very robust, and time will tell if the operator comes out ahead with this gambit.

To keep these issues at bay, a telco needs four things, before an offering is launched – technology, capacity, competence, and execution. That’s where Huawei comes in. To cater to operators’ business and technical needs, and address the aforementioned challenges, Huawei has developed a comprehensive professional services suite that spans a typical project lifecycle. Fig. 1 illustrates the eight phases involved – consultation, planning, design, implementation, operation, optimization, innovation, and expansion.

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How it works

Huawei’s business solutions draw on the industry experiences of the last two decades, particularly in the field of IP transformation.

Consultation & Planning phases (Advisory services)

Huawei adapts its methods to meet customer needs, not vice versa. Huawei will draw on the operator’s own experiences with what works, and combine this with a SWOT analysis of their current planning, execution, and management techniques, to jointly create a transformation plan best suited to the customer’s place in the ecosystem.

High-level transformational planning – A high-level transformation program is created that will function as a blueprint for a common understanding between the different stakeholders (operator & vendor). Fig. 2 illustrates a typical IP-based transformation program plan developed by Huawei’s professional services team.

Establishment of a joint program management office – It can be very difficult to adapt the latest technologies to suit the business needs of a particular carrier. A joint project management office (PMO) is created to assure that vision and strategy translate

into action. A governance model is also implemented for various organizations and external entities.

Current network auditing – Today’s networks are constantly in flux; in spite of stringent in-house regulations designed to ensure consistency, architecture that is homogeneous and anomaly-free is extremely rare. An independent audit that determines these inconsistencies is created, which will form the basis for network standardization, which will, in turn, form the basis for benchmarking. This audit also aides the process of network simulation and helps mitigate the effects of any catastrophic failure later on.

Business planning – A new network is merely an expensive bauble if it does not improve the bottom line. Huawei will draw up a plan that specifies key benefits that the number crunchers will love, in terms of your current user base, new revenue streams, and ROI.

Design and Implementation phases

Architectural assessment – Huawei will employ a collaborative model between vendors and other third parties that will better enable the review and evaluation of the architectural roadmap, existing network designs, network component details, applications & services (current & future), and how they relate to the technical objectives. This helps ensure consensus concerning the architectural state of and identifies gaps in the current

Figure 1 Huawei professional services

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A new network is merely an expensivebauble if it does not improve the bottom line. Huawei will draw up a plan that specifies key benefits that the number crunchers will love, in terms of your current user base, new revenue streams, and ROI.

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network design.Test-driving the anticipated network –

Network simulation is resource intensive and time consuming. Therefore, validation procedures should be broken up into modules (functionality, performance, security, scale, etc.) and implemented using third-party tools or the vendor’s lab; this helps preserve architectural simplicity. If this option proves unattractive, a section of the operator’s own network can be used as the wind tunnel; this requires more methodical planning & stricter controls, but it yields more valid results.

Knowledge transfer planning and “go-to-market” initiatives – Those who design networks typically do not manage or operate them, which makes gap analysis (of specif ic technology transformations) and subsequent development of a knowledge transfer plan all the more important as it must include the technology basics, product training, hands-on training (if relevant) and demonstration. In parallel, the product team must have a thorough understanding of its new toy as its features must be slick and seamless by the time marketing and pilot trials ramp up.

Operation and Optimization phases

Migration & pilot network evaluation – Huawei plans each site carefully and accurately, and

Phase 1: Business & technical planning

Phase 2: Validation & implementation

Phase 3: Operation & optimization

• Business planning• Service & network profiling• Launch planning• Ecosystem establishment

• Network baseline & blueprint creation• Gap analysis• Engage vendors & third parties• Resource identification & delegation for project team• Technical strategy & solution architecture

development• Migration plan & implementation plan development• Design & migration validation • Live migration of pilot sites• Monitoring of KPIs, KQIs, and user experience

• Operational planning• Educational section organization• Network performance measurement• Work with vendors to meet

expectations for architecture, service & network

Figure 2 IP transformation planning

uses intelligent mechanisms [migration (initially) and routing (later) plans] and automation tools to churn out large-scale configuration files that accelerate the migration process and eliminate typical manual errors. Proactive O&M is extremely important for an integrated network as it ensures QoE integrity, which is why Huawei employs various tools that visualize the network and service states.

Network optimization – The dynamism of modern networking renders optimization a constant struggle. Software updates, service launches, and network expansion are always being implemented, which warrants perpetual fine tuning. Huawei helps identify traffic optimization paths so that bottlenecks are removed, processing overhead is minimized, fai lure detection is improved, and single-point failures are eliminated from network operation.

Today’s networks are very complex and involve multiple technologies, protocols, and services. No vendor can offer a “one-size-fits-all” piece of hardware that resolves all issues throughout the network lifecycle. A partner is needed who can work with an operator at each stage to make sure that all the little pieces fit together to form the expected picture; Huawei is that partner.

Editor: Cao Zhihui [email protected]

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ODN O&M: Manageable and easy

By Liu Huaqing

ODN passivity hinders O&MDN pipe resource data accuracy is difficult to maintain during the O&M process thanks to database update failures caused by neglect or

misoperation. The average error rate for resource data exceeds 20%. Operators must repeatedly clean up and rectify the data, which involves a plethora of optical equipment, resources, man hours, and headaches.

O D N O & M p r o c e s s e s s u c h a s l a b e l identification and port search are all done by hand, which makes fiber connection efficiency rather low.

Further exacerbating the situation is the complexity of collaboration and communication between the relevant departments. Considering the massive number of cables and labels involved, the search for a particular port is an ordeal.

For routine checking and fault location, O&M personnel often need to determine the connections between certain optic fibers. As fibers are labeled manually, these labels are often unclear. Resolution may involve a call back to HQ or an onsite guesstimate; neither is optimal as far as O&M efficiency is concerned.

The passive nature of ODN infrastructure is clearly the culprit of all of the above difficulties

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Optical distribution networks (ODNs), thanks to their passive nature, are not easy to operate or maintain. Currently, ODN pipe resource information (dumb resources), which is also used for service activation and maintenance, is not effectively managed; this brings about numerous O&M challenges.

The Huawei iODN solution is designed to manage and simplify the O&M process. By adding certain smart elements to compensate for an ODN’s passive nature, this solution smartens management and simplifies deployment, effectively cutting management and operating costs for operators.


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with ODN O&M; automation would seem the answer.

iODN makes O&M quick & easy

The Huawei iODN solution is designed to manage and simplify the O&M process. By adding certain smart elements to compensate for an ODN’s passive nature, this solution smartens management and simplifies deployment, effectively cutting management and operating costs for operators.

By reading eID optical distribution frame (iODF), fiber distribution terminal (iFDT), and fiber allocation terminal (iFAT) data, iODN O&M enables intelligent management and data consistency for optical fibers, including data related to port state, optical route, and fiber connection relationship, thereby ensuring support for service provisioning and troubleshooting.

Each eID contains a globally-unique identifier, similar to a MAC address, as well as comprehensive information on individual optical fiber sections, which may include optical routing, sequential location of a certain fiber, and information on the optical splitter or distribution module connected to a certain fiber.

Huawei iODN’s O&M tools include the ODN management system, the iField proprietary tool,

the N2510 OLS, and the U2000 access network management system (NMS). Each works with the other to increase ODN O&M efficiency.

The U2000 ODN NMS forms the ver y core, as it manages ODN equipment, maintains resource data integrity, provisions services for fiber connection, and handles online query. It also serves as the interface between iODN and the upper-layer operational support systems, including the platforms for orders & resource management and the alarm system.

The iField tool is a professional handheld instrument, used primarily for guidance of onsite fiber connection, field data gathering, and field query, all of which significantly enhance the efficiency of field operations.

With support from smart equipment such as the iODF, iFDT, and iFAT, the ODN NMS interacts directly with various devices such as smart ODN nodes (if active) through available management channels. If said nodes are passive, they must be connected through iField, which provides power supply and communications channels, so their information can still be reported to the NMS in a timely manner.

The iField also plays a crucial role at key points in the closed-loop data management process to ensure data integrity. When connected to a device, iField automatically checks onsite data against

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instruction ticket information and gives a prompt if any error is found. If the error has no impact on the connection process, it will continue while the error is reported for resolution at a later time. If the iField determines that operation personnel are not following ticket instructions, it will give them an immediate prompt.

The ODN NMS can detect all data changes and ensure data integrity in a timely manner, be it through changes to the instruction ticket distributed by the scheduling system or onsite changes in fiber connection. Even when O&M personnel operate other passive devices, iField will automatically report changes when finally connected to said devices, thereby ensuring timely data update.

The ODN NMS will also make timely reports concerning any data changes to the upper-layer resource system. This ensures data integrity for the resource system, which provides correct data intended for service provisioning and scheduling.

High-efficiency fiber connection

The connect ion proces s beg ins by f i r s t connecting the ODN NMS with the integrated scheduling and resource management systems to obtain instruction information and ensure data accuracy. The NMS then issues electronic orders to the iField’s operators.

After onsite personnel connect iField, it will guide the connection process automatically. Throughout the entire procedure, iField directs smart ODN power conservation devices that will switch on port indicators based on instructions; onsite personnel need no longer search for the targeted port by hand. When faults occur, iField

can be used to identify the standby port for a particular port, restoring services as quickly as possible.

Upon the completion of operations, iField will automatically report the results to the NMS, closing the loop for the connection process.

Support for onsite troubleshooting

With iField, onsite personnel can easily get a clear picture of optical connection data and data for the entire optical routing process by inputting data for any single port or user along the route. Time need no longer be wasted during searching or checking with the network management center, which still may not guarantee data accuracy.

Huawei iODN enables easy and manageable O&M for an ODN. After its pilot deployment at China Telecom’s Xuancheng branch in Anhui province, iODN facilitated a 58% reduction in working hours devoted to onsite fiber (48-cord) connection.

Huawei iODN features rapid deployment & service provisioning, as well as visualized intelligent management, all of which have won high praise in the industry. At the Broadband World Forum Europe 2011 in Paris, Huawei iODN became the first of its kind among passive network solutions to win the InfoVision Award for its eID and intelligent network management. So far, iODN standards-related documents have been completely accepted by the IETF, while other players across the industry chain have jumped on the bandwagon of intelligent ODN. With industry collaboration, the reality of manageable and easy O&M for ODNs is within reach.

Editor: Xu Ping [email protected]


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China Unicom ShanghaiDevising strategies to bear the futureChina Unicom Shanghai has leveraged the advantages of the network management system (NMS) to implement its IP RAN network, which is now as easy to operate and maintain as an SDH network.

s its largest city, Shanghai is taking the lead in China in terms of WCDMA/LTE development. China Unicom Shanghai (Shanghai Unicom) plans to

invest RMB12 billion (USD1.9 billion) into its network infrastructure over the next three years. Its 3G base stations will total 13,000, while its transmission rate will jump from 7.2 to 42Mbps. These developments will certainly put further strain on Shanghai Unicom’s backhaul network. After considering the future demands of bearing LTE and high-value fixed services, Shanghai Unicom selected IP RAN for the building of its multiservice bearing network, the evolution of which will pose new challenges for its operation & maintenance (O&M) practices.

Key challenges for IP RAN O&M

IP O&M skills

Shanghai Unicom’s multiservice bearing network will comprise more than 5,000 pieces of equipment, the daily maintenance of which will be performed by its regional maintenance centers (nearly 100 members per team). However, its current regional O&M personnel know more about transmission & access than about IP O&M techniques. IP RAN involves dynamic IP protocols such as IP/MPLS, but IP technology is very complex; it would take more than a year for O&M personnel to master the relevant skills. Clearly, this period needs to be shortened.

O&M specifications

The China Unicom Group has more than ten

specifications regarding transmission, FTTx access, IP network equipment, NM, and OSS, which provide effective guidance for daily maintenance. However, IP RAN is a new technology that bears high-value services and technologies (WCDMA/LTE, private lines for official and corporate entities, and video). Operating such a large IP backhaul network with quality and efficiency would be nearly impossible without O&M standardization.

OSS platform

Shanghai Unicom uses an integrated OSS NMS

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China Unicom Shanghai: Devising strategies to bear the future

for centralized monitoring/control of its Internet backbone and IP metropolitan area network (MAN). It also utilizes an NMS from its equipment supplier for auxiliary monitoring/control of warnings and performance. Configuration and troubleshooting are performed through the command line. The operator will add over 5,000 pieces of IP RAN equipment over the next three years; timely network deployment and base station activation/adjustment will be critical. Wireless users are demanding and fickle. O&M personnel must identify latent issues in the network before they emerge, but this is more than what Shanghai Unicom’s previous IP OSS could enable.

“SDH-like” O&M

In 2010, Shanghai Unicom selected Huawei for its IP RAN service-bearing network project. Both parties analyzed and explored IP RAN O&M in depth, and the results have so far been satisfactory.

Simplified architecture, easier O&M

Daily network maintenance includes preventive maintenance, daily monitoring, service activation, troubleshooting, and network analysis. The SDH network comprises thousands of devices and services, leading to frequent base station activation and adjustment (over 100 instances per day). However, O&M can still be conducted easily through visualized configuration of the NMS.

Shanghai Unicom found IP RAN to be very similar to traditional SDH networking in terms of maintenance. It is almost unfeasible to maintain massive amounts of IP equipment by using the command line interface (CLI). The NMS must neutralize the complexities of IP networking through fixing, simplifying, and visualizing the command line; this allows O&M personnel to perform daily tasks in simple steps, which saves time and minimizes training costs.

Traditional CLI-based maintenance is a single-point operation where equipment is isolated and manually correlated to ensure smooth and accurate maintenance. IP RAN architecture typically involves thousands of pieces of equipment, totaling roughly 10,000 links and hundreds of thousands of logical interfaces; with this many points involved, the aforementioned maintenance methods are clearly impossible.

Shanghai Unicom uses its NMS to manage

critical IP network resources in a “network+services” manner, thereby visually correlating its network resources. The operator presents physical and clock links through a topology that enables a clear view of network status. Like the E1 circuit and VC4 path for the SDH network, which correlate network resources, Shanghai Unicom abstracts Layer 2/3 VPN and TE tunnels that bear base stations into service resources for E2E management, making the bearing relationships for base stations as clear and simple as those for SDH.

Shanghai Unicom now estimates that its O&M personnel can master service activation after a mere three to four weeks of training.

Enhanced efficiency through O&M standardization

Shanghai Unicom had more than a decade of experience with traditional SDH and IP networks, so it had numerous entrenched O&M specifications/practices that would have to be overcome if IP RAN deployment was to be successful.

The operator worked with Huawei to draft the Daily IP RAN Maintenance Operation Plan, Configuration Specification on IP RAN Base Station Service Activation and Adjustment and the IP RAN O&M KPI & Assessment Recommendations, based on the current China Unicom Communication Network O&M Procedures – Network Equipment and the MEF standards for IP backhaul networks. All of these documents refined Shanghai Unicom’s daily O&M procedures for the IP RAN era.

Shanghai Unicom has made it clear that all service configurations and adjustments must be performed through the NMS; the consistency of newly configured and existing data should therefore be verified. In the event of conflict in configuration, O&M personnel will be notified, which ensures configuration accuracy and compliance while reducing the risk of human error in the equation.

GSM/WCDMA/LTE base stations are more demanding on mobile backhaul. Shanghai Unicom analyzed the MEF quality requirements for WCDMA/LTE service bearing and has clarified its quality requirements for IP RAN bearing. Based on these standards, the operator defined two critical indicators for IP RAN operations, namely the base station and regional quality compliance rates. The latter serves as a critical indicator for assessing maintenance performance for each regional repair center as it drives proactive network maintenance.

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NMS collaboration

Shanghai Unicom’s OSS NMS is centralized and vendor agnostic, while Huawei’s NMS solution has advantages in terms of network and service understanding; the latter also enables a deeper understanding of the Huawei O&M interface. Shanghai Unicom leverages its OSS for centralized alarm monitoring and management across the IP RAN, backbone network, and NGN bearer networks; which is done primarily by first-line monitoring personnel. On the other hand, Huawei’s NMS enables a focus on network deployment, base station service activation and adjustment, network quality monitoring and early warning, as well as troubleshooting, by second-line support personnel.

Based on the unified specifications, Shanghai Unicom simplified certain base station activation and adjustment scenarios. It has successfully deployed nine access rings and activated more than forty base stations for service provisioning. According to its O&M personnel, “U2000 NMS is very similar to the SDH NMS in terms of the activation efficiency and operation experiences.”

Since dynamic routing protocols were deployed in the IP RAN, accurate fault location was the key challenge. Shanghai Unicom responded by using the NMS to encapsulate those dynamic and connectionless configurations into a visualized path for base station bearing and then encapsulate various smart troubleshooting methods based on

that path, thereby enabling automatic location of specific faulty equipment and ports.

On a certain day, the wireless department reported that “3G voice quality is poor with frequent call drops (in a certain apartment complex).” This occurred during peak hours, so the O&M personnel were under heavy pressure. They promptly used the U2000 NMS to check the forwarding path from the base station to the RNC and then initiated fault diagnostics. The fault was identified within ten minutes and cleared within twenty. Thanks to the simplicity of these processes, O&M personnel no longer need accumulate experience through use of the command line over a long period. Instead, two to three weeks of training are sufficient for them to acquire the acumen needed for basic troubleshooting.

During implementation of its pilot integrated IP RAN bearer network, Huawei’s NMS proved its utility in terms of deployment efficiency, service activation speed, ease of troubleshooting, and performance monitoring/control. This solution has enabled the rapid completion of Shanghai Unicom’s IP RAN, in a manner no more complex than it would be for SDH.

IP represents the future of networking. Shanghai Unicom will continue exploring and enhancing its O&M skills, increasing OSS capabilities, and improving O&M specifications to create an advanced and efficient IP network O&M system.

Editor: Chen Yuhong [email protected]

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With the introduction of OTN into metro networking, O&M

personnel face an entirely new network structure. O&M methods

from the SDH days have proven inadequate for OTN architecture.

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Simplifying OTN O&M for greater efficiency

By Li Bo

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s network technologies and smart terminals evolve, IP services have gradually become the killer app for MAN architecture, with large-granularity services steadily gaining in

importance. Both of these trends require metropolitan transport networks (MTNs) to accommodate IP transformation, which promises capacity, granularity, and reliability. This makes OTN the inevitable choice for ultra-broadband MAN construction, thanks to its cost-effective bandwidth and ability to support flexible scheduling of fine-grained services.

However, OTN introduction into an SDH network presents huge O&M challenges; the O&M workload increases significantly, while equipment management, service provisioning, troubleshooting, and resource management are also very different. Legacy O&M procedures are modestly automated and will therefore prove inadequate for the upkeep of complicated OTN infrastructure.

O&M complexities for OTN architecture

Fi r s t , OTN dev i ce s themse lve s a re more complicated. A piece of SDH equipment is basically

a box of optical-fiber connections, making its O&M more easy, while an OTN device will have numerous subracks within, with fiber inputs & outputs running from each subrack along different signal routes. When a fault occurs, it is virtually impossible to determine if its origin is an internal or external fiber.

OTN architecture also has multiple service layers, which complicates parameter configuration. Compared to the one-layer service model for SDH, which basically performs add/drop multiplexing of data frames, the OTN service model has six layers, which is why it takes at least ten times as long to configure a service for OTN.

A massive number of alarms are generated by OTN networks, with separate ones for each service layer. However, many are invalid, which makes it all the more difficult to determine and troubleshoot the genuines. If an optical fiber is severed, all the services it bears will be affected, leading to thousands of alarms. It typically takes several hours to one day to find the needle in this haystack.

OTN architecture is also opaque, especially when it comes to resource utilization, leading to wastage and idling. The standard week spent on service activation and provisioning would be at least two for OTN, thanks to the “crawling around in the dark” that is involved. If network resources prove

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inadequate, time will be expended on expansion. The aforementioned complexities require

more from the O&M team, in terms of skills & knowledge. Team members have to spend more of their time training, which is a drag on efficiency.

OTN capability, SDH simplicity

To address the aforementioned challenges, Huawei has announced a solution that simplifies the O&M process for OTN by making it more like the SDH process; this is accomplished through a network management system (NMS).

OTN equipment transparency

To deal with the internal complexities of OTN equipment, the NMS provides signal flowcharts, which prov ide a c l ea r v i ew o f the s e r v i ce configurations within OTN devices; these may include optical-fiber connections between various boards & subracks as well as alarm and wavelength information. In other words, personnel need no longer physically check the equipment in question for relevant information.

A certain European operator had over 5,000 sets of WDM equipment on its MAN. Their biggest O&M headache had been dealing with incorrect optical-fiber connections or improperly plugged-in boards. Such faults took a long time to troubleshoot, resulting in long service interruptions, totaling an average of more than five hours per month.

Thanks to the Huawe i NMS f lowchar t functionality, these types of faults have almost disappeared. Even when they do occur, they are largely resolved before complaints roll in.

E2E service scheduling

The NMS packages and streamlines the original six OTN layers (OTS, OMS, Och, OTUk, ODUk, and Client) into two layers (Och and Client). Users need only create Och and Client paths manually to complete OTN service provisioning. As for SDH, O&M personnel need only click the source and sink nodes on the NMS graphic interface, for which the routes between and parameters for are calculated automatically. This enables end-to-end O&M on par with what had been previously possible for SDH.

A certain large bandwidth-lease operator

activated an average of 150 wavelength services per month in 2011 and that figure is expected to be over 300 in 2012 (over 15 services per business day). If O&M personnel configure new services for one layer after another, they could only activate five per day. Thanks to the simplified service model for OTN provided by Huawei, the operator has seen its service provisioning efficiency increase six fold to 30 services per business day.

Timely fault location

By analyzing the relationships between the six OTN service layers, Huawei has determined the correlations between alarms from these layers. It has also established the principles governing their analysis, which are employed in its NMS. The system can also quickly identify the alarms that have real impact on services and prioritize their troubleshooting accordingly.

Another operator in Europe had previously employed its own OSS for fault handling. When a network fault occurred, an alarm was reported to the OSS, through which O&M personnel would locate and resolve the fault.

In 2010, OTN was introduced into its MAN, with its network services ranging from the optical to the electrical layer. According to network tests, more than 1,000 alarms were reported to the OSS when optical-fiber breakage occurred. This made it impossible for the O&M personnel to locate such faults through the OSS, throwing the entire network into chaos. After deployment of Huawei NMS, breakage alarms have been reduced to roughly a dozen; those that do occur can be resolved more rapidly now that false alarms are much more rare.

Network resource conservation

Huawei NMS al so enables management of network bandwidth resources via virtual resource pooling, while outputting bandwidth usage statistics that encompass different service granularities and dimensions. In this way, OTN resource utilization is visualized, which cuts down the time spent on service activation to a few minutes, while making capacity expansions more timely.

Huawei NMS makes OTN O&M as simple & efficient as that for SDH, while leveling the learning curve for O&M personnel, which ensures a smooth transition now and into the future.


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Worry-free FTTx O&MBy Liu Huaqing

O&M challenges during the FTTx lifecycle

i t h b r o a d b a n d s e r v i c e s a n d subscriber demands ever growing, FTTx has emerged as the optimal architecture for fixed operators. Howeve r, a s mos t ope r a to r s

l a c k e x p e r i e n c e w i t h th i s cu t t ing - edge

t e c h n o l o g y , F T T x

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deployment, particularly on a large scale, remains challenging throughout the process.

Inefficient ODN planning and deployment

Compared with copper networking, optical distribution network (ODN) planning is much more complex, thanks to the point-to-multiple point (P2MP) topology typically employed, which necessitates comprehensive consideration of deployment scenarios, costs, optical splitter protection, scalability, and engineering survey information. More importantly, operators also need to bear in mind factors related to the evolution to next-generation PON technologies.

The network building itself is also more challenging and error-prone, as fiber is more fragile than copper and a greater number of connection points are needed. Comprehensive testing should be carried out before a project is considered completed. Unfortunately, the workload and skills required are a serious barrier.

Massive MxU deployment

During FTTB/C deployment, a large number of small MxU boxes must be installed close to the user side, as opposed to the ADSL deployment scenario where access equipment is placed and managed primarily in central offices. Naturally, this makes FTTx project delivery more complicated and demanding, not just in terms of logistics and planning but in sheer workload, as the number of physical units deployed is increased at least ten fold.

Engineers often have to climb poles, scale walls, and wade through other unpleasantness, with a laptop in tow, to install these units; there’s also a

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Huawei FTTx O&M solutions enable timely, comprehensive network planning/deployment, while enhancing service provisioning efficiency and simplifying daily maintenance.

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lot of driving involved, which can really pile up the miles, fuel bills and man hours, and that’s just for deployment. Multiplying this by a large number of updates makes FTTx seem downright daunting, both in terms of O&M and TTM.

Slow service provisioning

As the scale of an FTTH network increases, so does the number of optical network terminals (ONTs). If the IT system does not support automatic activation and configuration of FTTx services, manual ticket distribution is the only choice, which means that resources must be pre-selected, also manually. Clearly, such a method is not viable if an operator wants to be omnipresent and up-to-date.

Automat ic s e r v ice ac t iva t ion , remova l , suspension, restoration, modification, and porting of voice, broadband, and IPTV services under different FTTx service scenarios are clearly in demand, as manual operation for all of the above would strain the O&M resources of even the largest operator.

Difficulties in fault demarcation and assignment

When China Telecom Shanghai (Shanghai Te l e com) wa s a t the e a r l y s t age o f FT Tx development, its primary challenges lied in user-end installation. As the subscriber base surpassed 5,000, fault diagnosis emerged as a key drag on network development.

This problem started with the service hotline. There was no pre-processing tool for front-line customer service staff, so most complaints were passed to O&M engineers for troubleshooting, who found it difficult to distinguish office-end, optical-fiber-line, and terminal-end faults, resulting in a laborious process of elimination that triggered even more complaints. Even after the fault’s general vicinity was determined, a plethora of equipment and connections, spread out over a large area, further hindered the process, as tools for determining a fault’s precise location were unavailable.

Complex ODN O&M

An optical distribution network (ODN) enables line resource data management, yet it is passive in nature. Data from the resource database becomes faulty if there is a breakdown in the process or

a non-compliant operation. Based on a Huawei study of 10+ operators, ODN resource data has an average error rate of about 20%. Inaccurate data is retrieved during the processes of service activation and maintenance, which makes daily provisioning and troubleshooting more difficult.

Rapid deployment, easy O&M

Huawei has introduced a series of industry-leading O&M solutions to faci l i tate FTTx deployment and O&M. This series exhibits two distinct features. Firstly, it continuously maintains FTTx network resources, services, and information, while solving O&M problems for each phase of network deployment/operation. Secondly, the solution consists of multiple products or tools specialized for each phase. These tools focus on different areas yet work together to jointly complete various O&M tasks.

ODN planning and deployment

Huawei’s proprietary profess ional ODN planning & design service, which is based on the industry-leading GIS platform, facilitates both high- and low-level design. It automatically generates route plans as well as various planning & design schemes that allow clear comparison between them.

This tool also fully takes into account various factors such as network building requirements, site conditions, and engineering survey results, so that engineers can produce an optimal design plan that ensures reasonable initial investment as well as smooth upgrade.

Operators can be assured of standardized and efficient design & implementation solutions, which lay a solid foundation for efficient O&M. This ODN service has been selected by more than 50 operators around the world.

Batch MxU pre-deployment

Huawei’s batch MxU pre-deployment solution is designed to tackle the difficulties of massive MxU deployment for FTTB/C. With this solution, engineers need only create a pre-deployment Excel spreadsheet and import it into the U2000 network management system (NMS) before MxU deployment, as opposed to completing configuration through the command line.

Onsite installation is also far simpler as engineers

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need not bring their laptops for onsite tool calibration. Finally, checking & acceptance can be done remotely by batch via the U2000. Now that the China Telecom Group has widely implemented this solution, only one site visit is required for batch deployment, while software commissioning is thirteen times more efficient.

E2E service provisioning

The Huawei U2000 NMS facilitates both commissioning and automatic service provision. For Shanghai Telecom, the NMS provides northbound interfaces, while the IT system configures and supplies it with parameters. The NMS then finishes configuration to activate services one by one. It also neutralizes vendor compatibility issues, while featuring networking flexibility, fewer parameters and clearer layers.

For Shanghai Telecom’s “bridging+voice” ONT, the OSS activates services via the U2000. For the “SFU+HG” ONT, the OSS implements single family unit (SFU) layer-2 service channel configuration via the U2000, and then configures home gateways through the ITMS to activate services. Currently, Shanghai Telecom is able to complete installation, indoor cabling and service activation within three days, at a maximum handling capacity of 3,000 subscribers per day.

Huawei’s FTTx O&M solution also features

iODN, which not only enables automat ic provisioning of access terminals at the service provisioning phase, but also prompts the ODN management system through automatic ticket distribution to assist in the efficient configuration of ODN optical routes.

Such an electronic-based E2E provisioning mode overcomes the pitfalls of printed ticket transfer and non-closed-loop management by enabling automatic ticket return, automatic verification, and plan data correction.

Daily O&M assurance

O&M assurance is always an operator priority. Huawei’s O&M assurance solution integrates all Huawei FTTx O&M products and subsystems, including the N2510 FTTx O&M assurance system, the U2000 NMS, the TMS1000 terminal management system, and the ODN management system. These products interact and collaborate with each other to enhance operators’ daily assurance efficiency and quality.

• Fault pre-handling & one-touch fault demarcation

Complaint handling typically begins with customer service staff and moves through second- and third-line maintenance engineers. This is a long process that is best avoided through front-end

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complaint resolution. Designed to enhance front-end personnel fault

resolution competence, Huawei’s N2510 ITS makes southbound connections to the U2000 for access to the NMS, N2510 OLS, TMS1000, and ODN management system, to receive detailed information concerning OLT equipment, ODN lines, terminals, and resources. It then carries out fault diagnostics, drawing on the collected experience of a case archive, which enables one-touch fault location.

The N2510 also supplies a script that service center staff can follow so that simple faults (particularly home network faults caused by improper use) are resolved right away, before maintenance personnel are consulted.

Fault location precision is seven-sections for FTTB/C and six-sections for FTTH. Based on statistics from a citywide branch of China Telecom, fault diagnostics are up to 85% accurate, thanks to its built-in case archive and analysis capabilities.

If faults occur outside the central office, the Huawei N2510 OLS performs precise ODN fault diagnosis through the optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR), based on equipment operation information. If faults must be identified to an interior/exterior precision, operators may install fiber Bragg grating (FBG) at those points. Currently, Huawei’s proprietary OTDR can operate a full 1:64 line split to directly test optical-fiber cables within the home at an accuracy of within three meters.

• Timely troubleshooting & intelligent early warning

Huawei’s FTTx O&M assurance solution also provides resolution and verification functionality. The U2000 supports ONU plug-and-play once an ONU fails and needs to be replaced.

After a fault is fixed, tools such as the U2000 and N2510 ITS also provide various verification measures to verify fault recovery and facilitate closed-loop processing. In addition, the Huawei FTTx O&M assurance solution provides fault resolution measures such as automatic service data restoration for board replacement, malicious customer feedback isolation, and automatic ONU restart after overheating.

Intelligent early warnings are indispensable to proactive O&M. Modules such as the ITS & OLS for the N2510 provide early warnings for faults in their respective fields. These systems gather and

monitor data for relevant parameters and compare them against pre-set early-warning thresholds.

• Professional evaluation & optimization to ensure QoS

For copper networks that supplement FTTB/C, the N2510 AOS provides line evaluation & optimization functionality prior to service provisioning and upgrade. For pre-service-provisioning evaluation, it collects parameter data such as uplink/downlink rate, line length, open/closed line state, background noise, and line attenuation, through a series of line test results to evaluate if the target rates for the lines in question can be reached, which provides a basis for service activation.

The N2510 AOS can also pre-evaluate line readiness, in terms of rates and stability, to support service upgrade. It employs technologies such as DLM, DSM, VN, and vectoring to automatically identify the ideal line optimization scheme, ensuring that connections are always in their best state.

Intelligent managementHuawei iODN is an intelligent optical fiber

management solution designed to al leviate workload pressure and avoid manual data entry errors, making widespread FTTH deployment significantly easier.

The iODN establishes correct optical-fiber connections and manages them to ensure accurate maintenance, maintenance ef f ic iency, and simplified O&M. Through automatic recognition of and data gathering for ODN fiber connection information, iODN reduces the workload while eliminating manual entry errors.

It also enables automatic search and location of optical fibers and ports through the U2000 ODN management system, the iField handset tool, and the intelligent port indication functionality of various distribution devices, thereby increasing the O&M efficiency and ensuring sustainable operation and management of large-scale FTTH networking.

The Huawei FTTx O&M solution has been successfully deployed by more than 30 operators all over the world, including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, France Telecom, and Telekom Malaysia.

Editor: Xue Hua [email protected]

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Professional service assurance for IPTV

By Zhang Wei, Wang Yindong & Xu Dongbing

Challenges for IPTV O&M

ew services, especially streaming media, are placing greater demands on the network. IPTV would seem a perfect example, but a deeper analysis reveals

that it is actually not a great burden, thanks largely to subscriber apathy. A large number of operators offer IPTV, but it excites no one anymore. It is one of those once-ballyhooed flavors now growing stale in the display freezer after months of sporadic tasting.

A great many operators released IPTV before their networks could deliver it as an “ooh-ahh” experience. Content catalogs were often limited to third-rate titles that most subscribers would not watch for free, while the image itself typically came across as blocky and dull on a 42-inch screen. In other words, IPTV could not compete with cable TV or physical media on any front, be it quality, selection, or price.

Today, thanks to industry advances (greater bandwidth, larger catalogs) and shifting consumer tastes (growing intolerance of commercials, decreasing willingness to “tune in next week”), IPTV would seem ready for its close-up; but it must be flawless this time to overcome the horror stories spread by early adopters. Certain O&M issues must be overcome for IPTV to be truly killer.

The primary hindrance is the fact that IPTV infrastructure has been thus far opaque. Operators cannot see the resources that are idling, lacking, or redundant. Without efficient resource leverage,

at each & every stage, users now accustomed to Blu-ray quality video will keep complaining that their picture looks bad enough to qualify as UFO footage.

Another major hurdle has been a lack of KPIs that reflect IPTV quality of experience (QoE). For most operators, IPTV service is a car with no dashboard. New indicators are needed that both reflect actual user experiences and help operators analyze root causes of service disruptions and hindrances.

The third major drag on IPTV service thus far has been its sensitivity to packet drop/error, which is only increasing in the HD era, thanks to the compression efficiencies, bit rates, and refresh rates involved. According to DSLAM Forum TR126, seamless HD video transfer requires a ratio of packet loss/error below 10-7.

A step-by-step solution

Huawei offers an O&M facilitation solution (Huawei IPTV O&M) intended to meet all

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Currently, IPTV faces key O&M challenges in three areas – network opacity, quality of service (QoS), and subscriber complaint handling. A solution that can comprehensively evaluate IPTV network performance and optimize service quality would fill an urgent need for streamlined, efficacious O&M.

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operator IPTV needs for the foreseeable future. It is compliant with TM Forum SLA management standards and incorporates technical raw indicators which are inherently complex and difficult to understand, and integrates them along certain dimensions such as time, measured target, and indicator type, into weighted mean composite indicators which are simple and intuitive. Their analysis allows operators to discover hidden patterns and problems.

Huawei IPTV O&M also enables operators to monitor service quality in real time, assess it, rate performance for comparison, and locate faults in a quick, convenient and transparent manner. Operators can also customize indicators, calculation methods, and thresholds. This solution covers every phase of deployment, from network bearing assessment to network design to pilot-release assessment to commercial-release assessment.

Accurate network capacity assessment

Comprehens ive a s s e s sment o f ne twork bearing capacity can include network equipment assessment, capacity assessment, and service simulation. For the former, Huawei IPTV O&M assesses the bearing capacity for layer-2 and layer-3 network equipment, as well as home IPTV networking equipment.

As for capacity assessment, this solution examines IPTV traffic modeling and available link bandwidth to determine numbers and locations of subscribers that the network can bear. Service simulation encompasses all DHCP, PPPOE, VoD, multicast service, and basic IPTV processes, yielding network MTU values and KPIs that are output along with service simulation reports that include recommendations for various scenarios.

Optimal network design

Huawei IPTV O&M aides the design of an optimal network that combines new services and technologies with legacy infrastructure. This process can include services such as basic network design, capacity and equipment planning/design, reliability design, service process design, and network evolution solution design.

Tailored short-term assurance services

The reward for an IPTV pilot launch is usually a surge of complaints; aside from the usual “squeaky wheel” logic that often drives such moaning, this

can also stem from improper installation and less-than responsive complaint handling by IPTV novices. If not properly resolved, these problems will greatly hinder service growth. Huawei helps by providing three to six months of short-term assurance services, customized for each operator. Said services can be divided into four areas – release organization, troubleshooting acceleration, efficacy testing, and staff training.

Commercial-scale assurance services

Service assurance is ongoing and may not get easier if there is rapid subscriber growth. Huawei helps out by deploying a cascaded indicator system fed by various probes, while a variety of tests, along with Huawei’s expertise pool, can also be leveraged continuously so that latent problems are nipped in the bud and QoE stays ahead of usurpers.

A series of IPTV video quality probes are employed that can accommodate a variety of scenarios, including mixed-vendor networking, QoE monitoring, timely onsite troubleshooting, and all-channel video monitoring.

These probes may be software- (PC, STB, network hardware) or hardware-based (external probes hung on network equipment). They function through video stream diversion or mirroring-based optical split, and can monitor 10Mbps to 1Gbps video streaming, so that E2E monitoring can be done for all channels.

As for fault location, Huawei IPTV O&M gives early warnings that help accelerate the troubleshooting process through its E2E probe

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deployment and customized indicator system. It also provides a robust and flexible detection toolkit, so that maintenance personnel can preset detection rules/thresholds templates, based on their own experiences. If a fault occurs, they simply need to start a combination of detections and a report will be output as soon as possible.

Huawei IPTV routers feature built-in iVSE video boards that work with the U2520 monitoring/control system to realize “visualized and controllable” user experiences. They also eliminate the pixelization that stems from packet loss/error.

With the RET retransmission mechanism, the user experience is guaranteed to remain unaffected, even if the packet loss/error ratio reaches twenty percent, while the FCC mechanism keeps the channel-switch interval below one second. More importantly, all the preceding monitoring and control functions are automated and visualized.

In addition, Huawei has conducted in-depth research into the systematic assessment of video quality, culminating in the vMOS algorithm, which takes into account a wide variety of factors, including original quality, impact from the network, application involved, and terminal involved, to better reflect subscriber QoE.

Real-world applications

This solution has been deployed by telecom operators worldwide. It effectively helps them solve evaluation and optimization problems during network revamping while providing strong support Editor: Xue Hua [email protected]

for the development of new IPTV services.In the case of Etisalat (UAE), mixed-vendor

networking was hindering transparency for both network capacity and service experience, while QoE monitoring and fault location across domains were non-existent.

Huawei provided a tailor-made IPTV evaluation and optimization solution that enabled E2E fault location from the STB to the head end; it reduced the time spent on fault location and daily checking by eighty percent, while IPTV QoE was also significantly improved.

For China Telecom Shenzhen, Huawei offered a customized solution that included systematic processes and methods for network-wide evaluation and optimization, and an Internet AV service quality assurance solution for IPTV.

Through static analysis of network traffic and the operator’s subscriber behavior model, this solution predicts service requirements for network bandwidth growth and thus sets the network indicator threshold model for long-term development.

It also provides comprehensive round-the-clock monitoring/control and assurance for IPTV service through dynamic network evaluation, which enables objective measurement of network bearing capacity and IPTV service operational status. China Telecom Shenzhen can now optimize its network continuously from, and it has seen significant improvements in its IPTV service experiences and network quality as well, which should guarantee it market competitiveness for years to come.

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By Geng Jianxu & Ma Bin

ltra-broadband microwave network service is increasingly being handled on an IP-basis, but this transition is proving very challenging for operators

and vendors alike, as service downtime must be minimized, QoS assured, and costs reduced. A systematic, customized optimization service that covers measurement, implementation and delivery tools is needed; the key elements of this service would be legacy network evaluation, network planning, and third-party services.

Three key elements

Assessment of current network KPIs

Though cost-effective, microwave transmission is quite sensitive, it can be hampered and even interrupted by obstructions and inclement weather conditions such as rain, snow, and fog. A network evaluation system with a complete set of real-life KPIs would help operators collect network performance data in real time, which would then be analyzed to reveal bottlenecks, redundancies, and other flaws.

Planning network targets

Network optimization is not an academic activity; operators have a business to run. Network planning must be comprehensive and creative, as microwave network migration may involve network combination or site/cluster relocation; both require customized services. Security and feasibility indices must also be simulated if a plan is to remain useful by the time the new network is implemented. Above all, target planning must keep in mind as the downtime must be minimized as much as possible.

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Microwave network bandwidth is expanding rapidly; comprehensive, dedicated optimization support is needed if increasingly IP-based network architecture is to be best leveraged.

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Catering to multi-vendor infrastructure

Microwave ne twork ha rdware typically is purchased from multiple vendors, so a network optimization service must be vendor-agnostic, or at least flexible. The service provider must understand the networking architecture and configurations/protocols that each vendor employs so that it can collect data accurately and extend network management system (NMS) coverage. The provider must also have a robust analysis capability, as it will be dealing with data in varying formats.

Enhanced network optimization service

Years of experience have yielded the tools with which Huawei offers a complete solution set for microwave network optimization, suitable for any phase of network evolution, including current state evaluation, LOS survey, network planning, project delivery, and network migration planning. With its refined methodology and real-world KPI system, Huawei can help evolve a network towards a specific target, or it can optimize on a more general basis.

Comprehensive KPIs that matter

If microwave network upgrade is to prove successful, a network’s pe r fo rmance , c apac i t y, r e source usage, and redundancies must be well understood. Details relevant to upgrade might include the number of empty subrack slots, vacancies for new antennas, and port bandwidth upgrade compliance for intermediate frequency boards. Huawei has established dual KPI systems that cover either performance or comprehensiveness. Overall, more than forty items are indexed into seven categories, so that any microwave network can be analyzed in a refined and quantitative manner.

Performance covers eight indices, including link availability, fade margin (FM), and unavailable second (UAS), all of which reflect microwave link availability (typically ranging from 99.995 to 99.997%) and provide references for link optimization and capacity expansion. Comprehensive indices are intended to reflect overall network status in terms of capacity, frequency, topology, or resources.

These indices help identify utilized/idle network resources and network bottlenecks, while facilitating long-term optimization preparation. Both index categories help operators manage their network status and optimize accordingly.

Efficient optimization tools

Huawei has also developed a series of tools, including Pathloss, Eplise, Des i gne r, and the AMS5000 , to facilitate network evaluation, network planning and project implementation. These too l s enab le network data collection, KPI analysis, air interface design, service planning, and equipment migration, while greatly enhancing network efficiency and quality; they are suitable for most key elements of microwave network optimization.

First, the AMS5000 collects live network data, evaluates network KPIs, and creates reports that aid the drafting of network optimization schemes. It can then simulate the target network, adjust relevant parameters, and update the overall plan accordingly. After this plan is confirmed, tools such as Pathloss and Eplise can be used for air interface design, with Designer used for service design. Throughout the entire process, Huawei service teams cooperate with licensed partners to deliver these optimization services in a timely and efficient manner.

Efficient third-party migration

Huawei ne twork opt imiza t ion services cover third-party equipment evaluation and migration; with said migration divided into three phases. Editor: Li Xuefeng [email protected]

First, data concerning network topology, equ ipment s t r u c tu re , and r ad io protection configuration is collected and analyzed. Second, network planning schemes that minimize downtime are drawn up; and th i rd , pro jec t management and delivery are carried out, with legacy equipment reused as much as possible.

Successful practicesHuawei has successfully carried out

network optimization for over 100 operators; twenty of these projects focused on microwave, including those for Ufone and CMPAK (Pakistan), as well as AxB (Bangladesh). Huawei also has over 100 microwave network migrations under its belt, including projects for Globe (the Philippines).

As an example, a certain operator had commenced its network deployment in 2001 with support from multiple vendors, gradually building a microwave network of over 6,000 hops. Network upgrades, however, did not bring enhanced user experience; it actually brought lowered KPIs, degraded multi-hop link performance, and antenna overloading. In addition, its legacy networks were TDM-microwave, which could not meet the needs of its booming wireless data services; upgrade was clearly necessary.

Thi s opera tor par tnered wi th Huawei for phased optimization of its microwave infrastructure. Huawei helped the operator evaluate over 20 KPI items, re-plan the network topology, adjust tower loads, identify & eliminate frequency interference, remove network bottlenecks, and reuse/migrate legacy equipment. As a result, network performance has been significantly enhanced.

With its experience and competence, Huawei was able to provide a competitive microwave network, which now forms the wireless backhaul foundation for this operator’s plans to be a leading carrier in its region.

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Rapid IP network growth is increasingly hindering the O&M

process. Accurate IP network diagnostics, O&M efficiencies that

leverage IP+OTN synergy, and cloud utilization are the way to go.

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Exploring O&M for IP+OTN synergyIP+OTN synergy can potentially facilitate the rapid growth of IP backbone networks, which is increasingly pressuring operation and maintenance (O&M) efforts for any & all operators who employ them.

tatistics indicate that the IP traffic growth is exceeding Moore’s Law, tripling every eighteen months. Bandwidth-hungry services such as video are driving some

operators to expand their network constantly; China Telecom has to set new targets every year. Traditionally, this is done by adding nodes and layers, leading to increased CAPEX/OPEX and stagnant margins.

IP backbone network architecture is being flattened and interconnected to lower bandwidth costs, while the IP and optical layers are also converging; this can be divided into four stages – IP-over-DWDM, IP-over-OTN, IP-over-OTN/ASON, and IP+OTN synergy. Through the unified network interface (UNI), IP+OTN synergy facilitates interconnection between the IP and transport layers, which enables network optimization and lowers costs for bandwidth/network expansion.

Challenges to overcome

IP+OTN syne rgy encompas s e s t r a f f i c , protection, and O&M. Traffic synergy requires optimization of both the IP and transport networks, where λ-level and ODUk traffic are

both offloaded to transport layers, at reduced cost, through physical ports or cOTN/VLAN sub-interfaces. Protection synergy enhances network reliability by combining the protection mechanisms on both the IP and transport networks.

O&M synergy i s a ch i eved through the network management system (NMS); through which operators can enhance O&M efficiency through E2E backbone network planning, monitoring, optimization, service provisioning, and troubleshooting. In addition, O&M synergy effectively supports both traffic and protection synergy. It enables IP-optical layer interaction th rough the GMPLS-UNI and the pa th -computation element (PCE).

However, there are still three major challenges remaining that must be overcome for IP+OTN synergy to come into being.

Difficult planning for traffic & protection

Statistics show that over half of network traffic flows through core routers. Operators need to expand network capacity constantly to meet traffic growth. DWDM/OTN costs less than routers, though it can bear traffic of the same speed; it should therefore be utilized for heavy-traffic services whenever possible, with light-traffic services still

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Cloud vs. In-house IT for SMBs55

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Timely & accurate IP network diagnostics58

By Huang Hairong

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Exploring O&M for IP+OTN synergy

carried by routers for statistical multiplexing. Traffic offload can help alleviate the pressure on routers and reduce the number of hops, while generating other benefits such as lowered costs and enhanced QoS. However, this is easier said than done. Services must be mapped between multiple layers, including IP/MPLS, ODUk, and WDM; such mapping must consider the performance and reliability of each layer, so that bandwidth demands are minimized over the entire network.

Another hindrance is the fact that one fault at the optical layer may cause multiple faults on the IP layer. Cross-layer planning must ensure the separation of shared risk link groups (SRLGs) at the IP layer. When the service protection mechanism is enabled for both the IP and optical layers, protection redundancies should be avoided. Cross-layer planners should also consider offloading traffic from the IP layer to the less costly optical layer, to reduce the costs of the backbone network.

Inefficient service provisioning

Typically, when bandwidth is insufficient for new service provisioning or service expansion, the router initiates a request to the transmission equipment through GMPLS-UNI. If the transport layer has sufficient resources, a connection is automatically established.

This may seem to be a solid process, but a flaw lurks within. Network management and service provisioning involve numerous O&M departments, including transmission, data communications, and network monitoring; a unified management system would ensure eff ic ient cooperat ion between departments, while reducing manual-input errors and ensuring accurate information

sharing. IP+OTN synergy will also complicate IP networking, which means that operators must enhance their configuration and management efficiency.

Alarm overkill

According to statistics from a European operator, a fault alarm at the transport layer increases ten-fold at the router layer. This added noise makes identification and resolution of the root problem onerous. Automatic alarm correlation and a unified alarm database are both needed so that low-priority cases are filtered out and troubleshooting efficiency is enhanced.

Huawei IP+OTN O&M refinements

To address the O&M problems brought about by IP+OTN synergy, Huawei has leveraged its experience to develop an integrated O&M solution.

Automatic cross-layer planning

Multilayer network optimization should focus on traffic offload, while following a step-by-step process of manual, semi-automatic, and intelligent optimization.

Physical ports can be optimized manually while WDM equipment can make adjustments at the wavelength level, but both processes are still complex. Great skill is needed when adjusting key traffic nodes, as precise traffic adjustment is less efficient and less accurate, making coarse

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adjustment more suitable at this level. Semi-automatic optimization simplifies planning

and improves accuracy through traffic monitoring and offline optimization. It involves multiple layers and methods. The GMPLS-UNI, a key interface between the IP & optical layers, is implemented at this stage. Semi-automatic optimization requires tools that monitor traffic and optimize multiple layers, in addition to the GMPLS-UNI supported by routers and WDM devices.

Ideally, intelligent optimization for multilayer networks would be automatic and done in real time, yet this will require support from multi-layer PCE and offload servers; it will also require mature standards.

Huawei offers a multilayer network planning tool (ML-NPT) that facilitates IP+OTN synergy. With its advanced algorithms, this tool helps plan the IP and OTN layers automatically, and then exports data which includes optimal routing, TCO, costs of each network layer/node, and wavelength deployment. With Huawei ML-NPT, operators can use less costly devices to enhance bandwidth and performance. By working with the SRLG, this tool can enable protection synergy for both the IP and optical layers.

Unified O&M synergy

Unified management can be realized through a unified NMS that integrates the management systems used by various O&M departments, enabling timely service provisioning, monitoring, and troubleshooting. If an IP service error occurs, the unified NMS can help explore various routes, view lower-layer WDM service and fiber routing information, and then locate the faulty layer and

route segment. When standards such as Y.1731, 802.1ag,

802.3ah, 802.3ba, and 802.3ae are implemented, unified operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) can be realized for both the IP and optical layers. The unified NMS can then locate faults directly through OAM testing at the IP layer.

The unified NMS defines the alarm correlation rules, based on optical-IP layer alarm relationships, which means that it can automatically identify the root alarms and therefore minimize the time wasted during maintenance.

Huawei U2000 enables unified management of the access layer, transport layer, and IP routers, while supporting timely and visualized service provisioning, template configuration, and deployment at the IP and optical layers. The U2000 also provides cross-layer topology display and correlates alarms at the IP and optical layers.

Partnering with Vodafone

In 2009, Huawei partnered with Vodafone to initiate a joint IP+optical innovation project in the U.K., which has since been upgraded to a Vodafone strategic project dubbed Multilayer Optimization (MLO). This project has subsequently explored cost-efficient protection of the IP backbone against simultaneous fiber blockages. As of December 2011, proof-of-concept (POC) testing has been completed in five phases, verifying the feasibility of key technologies such as ODUFlex, GMPLS-UNI, PCE, multilayer planning tools, unified OAM, and traffic offload through various VLAN sub-interfaces.

After testing the ML-NPT, visualized service management, cross-layer service correlation, and root alarm analysis functions of the U2000, Vodafone is very enthusiastic about it, especially its cross-layer O&M capability. Vodafone is expected to run a unified team to locate network faults, improve O&M efficiency, and reduce costs.

IP+OTN O&M is becoming more intelligent, with new technologies emerging that optimize multilayer networks and automatically locate cross-layer faults. With IP RAN and broadband bearer service/network development, IP+OTN synergy will gradually extend from the IP backbone to the metro network. Huawei will continuously explore IP+OTN O&M technologies and promote/develop relevant standards for the foreseeable future.

Editor: Xue Hua [email protected]

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Cloud vs. In-house IT for SMBs

Cloud vs. In-house IT for SMBsSMBs require both software-based and traditional hardware-based services, such as computing, connectivity, security and voice, provided via a plethora of in-house, networked hardware. But, as desktop functions transition to powerful mobile devices, and connectivity becomes ubiquitous, in-house boxes are nearing obsolescence. Their utility has diminished in a cloud-enabled world, as they contribute to office cost, complexity and clutter; there is now an emerging alternative.

Opportunity is knocking

here i s enormous opportunity in delivering IT services to the small and medium business/enterprise (up to 500 employees) market. Huawei

has estimated there to be 150 million small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the world, with their total IT spending easily exceeding USD500 billion in 2011. Exploiting this is difficult because the SMB environment is rapidly churning. The SMB market is the ultimate trial & error environment for business models and technology vendors. Many SMBs are replaced by new ones within three years.

However, SMBs have been largely ignored by IT vendors because there is little a multimillion dollar business and a ten-person startup have in common. Existing IT technology is far too complex and costly for most SMBs, both in terms of staff and equipment. Only 10 million SMBs use IT in any meaningful way; a roughly 8% penetration rate.

Accelerating change

Enormous technological change is driving new usage patterns centered on mobility and fundamental human desires to collaborate, both socially and economically. Wider bandwidths in wire & cable media have amplified core and peripheral network capacity tremendously, with accelerating wireless speeds (4G and 802.11n) relentlessly adding to the fray. Connectivity has literally exploded; the Internet can be accessed almost anywhere via various mobile technologies such as WiMAX, 3G, NFC, UWB, LTE, Bluetooth, and 802.11’s various incarnations.

With prices-per-bit plummeting, speeds increasing, and connectivity expanding, remote infrastructure has become viable, with no significant detriment to network performance, while intuitive & drastically more powerful end-user devices are now available. Tablets and other convenient mobile devices are now taking on desktop functionality; these devices can effectively create a personal WAN, with enterprise-caliber access to applications. This powerful combination of mobility & connectivity will inevitably push IT hardware infrastructure into the cloud.

Small start-ups are already experiencing resistance from venture capital firms when soliciting funds

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for rudimentary IT facilities. Many already rely on cloud computing for initial and ongoing growth needs. Eventually, start-ups will develop into the next Googles and Facebooks, driving cloud computing growth along with their own. Early technology adopters are increasingly purchasing their IT infrastructure as a service; thereby sowing the seeds for our future in the cloud.

Desired SMB technology characteristics

The vast majority of SMBs qualify as, and are staffed by, IT novices. When modest SMBs intend to deploy IT infrastructure, they look for products that are inconspicuous, inexpensive, intuitive and versatile. However, SMBs cannot eliminate upfront hardware costs or those that stem from laborious configuration of multipurpose devices. The most logical step for many of them is to migrate entirely to the cloud.

The choice: Site vs. Cloud

Should an SMB choose an office-based or cloud-based solution? With office-based solutions, the SMB owner does not obtain any material office features from a service provider; equipment has to be acquired and investments must be made in human capital to install, configure, manage, and operate the hardware and embedded software involved with generating IT services. There are often ongoing and hidden costs (maintenance, electricity, cooling) incurred with office-based IT services. Remote support of employees is also a burden that office-based users must bear while cloud-based users largely do not.

Cloud-based users need in-house hardware for system access only; the system itself is someone else’s problem. The service provider is responsible for provision to all terminals, no matter their location. Cloud-based services also allow customers to easily match service levels to their changing needs. Do SMBs really want to be responsible for building, managing, and maintaining IT infrastructure for their evolving needs?

Hosting: Office vs. Cloud

This decision comes down to choosing between satisfying the instinctive need to have your vital hardware in hand or letting go and using hosted apps and laptop computers that any child could manage; it is about where to host critical business applications, while satisfying

concerns about availability, security, interoperability, data portability and cost. As Internet access accelerates, expands, and grows more reliable, the economics behind hosted applications are increasingly compelling.

Because business services can now be effectively offered over the Internet and are often accessed through web browsers, they rarely conflict with your existing business technology; the primary benefits are reduced costs, near-instant deployment, simplified maintenance and greater autonomy. If a business is seasonal or has flexible staffing needs, cloud-based processing and storage on demand are all the more viable.

Security: Office vs. Cloud

Maintaining security involves solving a very large, expensive and difficult set of problems. An SMB cannot possibly match the skills of a professional, cloud-based security solution managed by a large staff of experts that focuses full-time on security and deploy the latest measures. Cloud-based technology is rapidly evolving; providers are making substantial investments in security technologies, skills, certifications and auditing techniques, while its multitenant architecture allows every SMB to enjoy the same level of security as those with the greatest security needs. In other words, SMBs can now be on a level playing field with larger competitors who are also utilizing the cloud.

VoIP: Office vs. Cloud

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) holds immense potential for SMBs and offers features that are either unavailable or cost-prohibitive on older phone systems, such as integration with desktop & office software, advanced call routing, find-me-follow-me and IVR (Interactive Voice Response). If SMBs wish to enjoy the business advantages of VoIP, the key issues are how and where to deploy the key infrastructure. Existing office-based voice system vendors offer this ‘upgrade,’ but ‘office means hardware costs. To extract the greatest value from office-based systems, SMBs must take the time to understand them and integrate them into existing business processes. Purchasing, installation and setup of in-house VoIP solutions can be exceedingly complex and costly. There are also other issues involved, such as services for a distributed workforce; many companies end up with a collection of incompatible, excessive, expensive and redundant phone systems, such as PBXs at branch offices, satellite locations, and residential phone service for telecommuters. This adds to administrative burdens, as charges must be justified and accurate reimbursements generated.

Cloud computing is ideal for a distributed workforce.

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VoIP delivered from the cloud eliminates the need for a large, initial financial outlay and provides greater service flexibility and scalability. SMBs avoid any network management or maintenance burdens because the switching and intelligence of the system is moved off site and managed by the provider. SMB purchases are limited to phones, a modest amount of dedicated routing equipment, and perhaps a switch to provide emergency backup to a traditional telephone network. This makes cloud-based VoIP services typically quicker and cheaper to install and set up while still offering more resilient service and smoother business continuation, all of which result in an enhanced bottom line.

In practice

Consider an SMB that has grown to 35 people, based in three locations. The headquarters has a staff of twelve, including administrative, sales, marketing and sales engineering (SE) support personnel; a remote office has ten staff members, primarily sales and SE support, while an overseas location is staffed with engineers and a QA team. Ten employees routinely work from home while the twelve combined sales & SE personnel primarily visit customers. All employees need IT-enabled voice, remote access, and business-enabling services. Support for such services could range from PCs to more expensive enterprise-level equipment that requires highly specialized technical staff to set up, configure and manage.

Internet connectivity is provided by cable/xDSL/fiber. Local network services are provided through routers, hubs, and one or more switches connected to an Internet delivery box. Access to the local network is protected by a firewall. Access to servers and the local network from remote offices is enabled via Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Voice services are provided by onsite IP PBX. Home and remote workers use VPN boxes and IP phones. For increased reliability and improved backup and recovery capabilities, many devices would have to be replicated.

Typical IT requirements for this firm would include employee workstations (including OS & application software), one or more servers, NAS for data backup and hardware/software recovery, network switches/plugs/cables, routers, security appliances & software, Internet connection, handsets, and other miscellaneous office supplies, many of which would have to be replicated if multiple sites are involved.

In-house IT infrastructure will likely interfere with an entrepreneur’s need to focus on business growth, which requires a steady increase in CAPEX

and OPEX. IT departments are a money sink; the amount of labor needed to manage office equipment and business software grows as a corporation becomes more complex. More people mean more problems and more distractions.

A cloud-enabled SMB office would have PCs and servers fully virtualized and hosted within the cloud. Internet connectivity would be provided by wireless 3G or 4G or through 802.11 hot spots. The local network in each office could be wireless 802.11. Firewall and VPN services would now fall under cloud-based hosted desktop services, including redundancy and backup. Voice services to all workers, including home-based and roaming, would be provided via cloud-based hosted IP PBX and VoIP services. Leveraging the cloud reduces complexity while all but eliminating technology management and lowering costs.

Why cloud?

A viable alternative to the traditional “Buy, Manage & Maintain” in-house IT service method is now available. Cloud-based services leave businesses free to focus on their core operations; only the most tech-savvy and tolerant SMBs would dare retain in-house hardware. Cloud-based services reduce IT service costs by 30-50%, while lowering the employee learning curve and minimizing equipment investments. Many providers already offer over 99% availability, and services can be discontinued with a minimum of fuss. Cloud-computing is also future-proof, as it is up to the provider to keep infrastructure up to date and disaster-resistant, as a provider’s equipment is more likely to withstand a flood than the typical SMB’s.

The cloud can deliver the latest business services conveniently, securely and inexpensively, while going a long way to help SMBs level the playing field with their bigger competitors. Even if IT products for SMBs are claimed to be designed to be less expensive than their enterprise counterparts, or claimed to be simpler and easier to deploy and maintain, they are still not a viable long-term solution. The cloud can provide the same IT business experience as a fully-managed local IT service and is a far better alternative to owning and managing in-house IT infrastructure. Cloud computing requires only a reliable Internet terminal; no servers, software instal lat ion, configuration, or maintenance are involved. The best part is that the office is always a click away, and features fully mobile and customizable suite of collaborative applications. Users will be part of a new generation that lives and works online.

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Timely & accurate IP network diagnostics

By Huang Bin

Alarm excesshe architecture of an IP network is highly stratified. A virtual leased line (VLL) service must traverse multiple layers of processing, including the physical layer, link layer,

routing protocol, MPLS, and VLL. If a physical fiber breaks, the physical layer, link layer, IP transport layer, and VLL will all be affected. Each will send out a large number of TRAP messages.

Correlation between protocols is also complex. A fiber breakdown will generally cause convergence of the routing protocol, hence the changes in multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) and the label distribution protocol (LDP), and the subsequent plethora of TRAP messages.

Alarm absenceThe absence of an alarm, however, is much more

complex. A fault can be defined as the failure of a network element to perform as expected, but what if there are no expectations? IP architecture, thanks to its fluid nature, makes expectations nearly impossible to systematically define.

The control plane determines the path from the source to the destination. On a traditional circuit-switched (CS) network, the administrator configures the active and standby paths. For each packet, its next hop can be clearly expected, along either the active or standby path. With IP networking, the routing protocol selects the path; the router ‘knows’ only the next hop, without knowing the expected service path. Therefore, when a breakdown causes route convergence or a path computation error results in divergence, the router fails to generate an alarm.

Huawei once encountered an NGN voice service failure that lasted for more than 40 minutes, yet the IP bearer network generated no alarm. The culprit was found to be an error in label-switched path (LSP) computation, resulting in mismatch between the computation result and intermediate system-

to-intermediate system (ISIS) result, yet no alarm occurred because the protocol that established the LSP did not know the expected path.

In terms of the forwarding plane, as IP networking is asynchronous, its forwarding mechanism cannot enable clear expectations. A packet from router X may be destined for router Y, but router Y will not be aware that the packet is coming and therefore will not generate an alarm if it fails to arrive.

The most common fault of this kind involves degradation between routers, resulting in packet loss. Without an alarm, such a fault may not be noticed or located for quite some time. Engineers will have to check each router along the path, without any hint as to where to begin.

Root alarm identification

When a flood of alarms comes in, the root alarm must be determined. According to Huawei statistics, most IP network faults stem from hardware and link degradation. Long-distance links are particularly sensitive to their surrounding environment; breakdowns occur from time to time. This generates a large number of alarms and causes interior gateway protocol (IGP) convergence, which leads to an increase in the number of alarms as IGP alarms trigger LSP alarms. In other words, a link alarm can bring about a multitude of protocol alarms.

For th i s i s sue , Huawei proposes a two-pronged approach. First, alarms must be classified (environment, hardware, software, interface, link, protocol, or service), with environment and hardware alarms having priority. When a higher-level alarm is resolved, the correlated protocol alarms should disappear automatically. This approach is simple and practical, and should produce the desired result in a short time. Second, an alarm correlation system should be established by vendors that depends on protocol and service. Correlated alarms would be displayed under the root alarm, so the administrator need only deal with the root alarm

IP network troubleshooting is typically an uphill climb. Fault location is hindered by an excess or absence of alarms, while fault determination is basically a tedious process of elimination. Both are slow and inefficient; a solution would be welcome.

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directly. This approach is certainly more complete, but it is arduous and time-consuming to establish.

Path expectation & detection

When a fault fails to trigger an alarm, current status must be compared against expectations, and must be done from the control plane and forwarding plane perspectives. Although a dynamic protocol is adopted for the IP control plane, it is still physically-based and involves the shortest path-first (SPF) algorithm. The simpler a network is, the clearer the path expectation will be. Small and medium-sized metropolitan area networks (MANs) typically have fewer layers, while active/standby links are usually adopted between layers for protection purposes. For such a network, faults can be effectively handled as long as network topology diagrams are accurate.

For a large and complex network, the service path is extremely hard to identify from the distribution of physical links. Network simulation can help calculate the expected path, as network configurations and topologies are imported into its software.

After a path expectat ion i s determined, OSS software regularly obtains path status for comparison against it; any mismatch triggers an alarm and prompts the administrator. Tracert can be adopted for small and medium-sized networks with simple architecture, but for large and complex networks where equal-cost multi-paths (ECMPs) occur, Tracert methods should be combined with forwarding table query for service path assessment. Said assessment can also be done by analyzing the flood of IGP packets and calculating the forwarding path via the routing algorithm and configuration.

Forwarding expectation & detection

In the forwarding plane, expectation is closely related to detection, which can be done through non-service-aware OAM, service-aware OAM, or service quality monitoring.

Non-service-aware OAM – This involves OAM-detection packet injection into the network so that expectations are predefined. The recipient therefore already has details concerning the detection packets, including their size and interval. When a received packet defies expectations, it qualifies as a fault.

This method is easy to deploy, as each network layer has an OAM protocol, such as Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD), EthOAM, Internet

Control Message Protocol (ICMP) ping, or MPLS OAM. However, mere OAM packets cannot fully illustrate the service situation, as they may not reflect certain service failures, at least not immediately.

Service-aware OAM – This method directly measures the service stream. A typical example would be the loss measurement function defined in the ITU-T Y.1731 standard. Simply put, it is a conservation principle for packets, where the number of received packets equals those sent. In terms of implementation, the sender and recipient both tally the service packets. The sender regularly sends the count to the recipient for double-checking; if their tallies don’t match, a fault is declared.

Service quality monitoring – With this method, service data is measured and compared with predefined thresholds. With IPTV service, for example, dedicated hardware is connected to the device port to directly measure IPTV traffic across the network; indicators might include the MOS value for VoIP. This method best reflects real-world conditions, but the deployment and maintenance of dedicated equipment is expensive. It also requires deep packet inspection (DPI), as actual packets must be sampled or analyzed against predefined expectations. These three methods can coexist, but the desirability of this depends on the operator’s service SLA goals and procurement & maintenance budget.

Furthermore, the control plane interrelates with the forwarding plane, as the operation of the former directly affects traffic distribution in the latter. Any problems with the control plane may lead to traffic congestion and device/link faults. Huawei, by integrating expectation determination and status detection for the control and forwarding planes, has developed a visualized IP network O&M solution (“path+traffic”) which provides all-around fault monitoring and location capabilities.

China Mobile, for example, has been able to slash its average MAN fault ticket tally from 500 per day to 10, thanks to Huawei’s ability to reduce the number of false alarms. This solution has also helped operators better visualize their IP network O&M. Usually, it takes operators hours or even days to troubleshoot the most common faults, such as link error, link interruption, component failure, and route error. With Huawei “path+traffic,” such common faults can be rectified within minutes, as dictated by internal testing.

Currently, this solution operates on several commercial networks on a pilot basis; results, thus far, have been significant; the maintenance process has been simplified, while the troubleshooting process has been accelerated.


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for ultra-broadband network operation

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