The present scenario
The bandwidth crunches are increasing exponentially and the demand for higher bandwidth is an emergency now. Similarly the need for higher connectivity and the need for which operators today need differentiated and customized services that match end users needs.

Mediation Services

The framework:
One of the primary solutions to the complexity of network management, is to make it possible for the various software systems speaking in one language (protocol) to access network elements, or other software systems (OSSs), which were developed to use another. This is called "mediation," and, in addition to protocol conversion, mediation involves protocol Syntax validation , verification.

Mediation Frame Work address the problem of seamlessly mediating diverse network management interfaces, solution is the Mediation Frame Work (MFW) that facilitates the development of configurable and scalable solutions for the access, transmission, wireless and switching networks along with the vast array of operational support.

TL1:

TL1 is a message based interface used to manage NE s that are deployed for Synchronous Optical Networks (SONET) and other key communication technologies. (Ex . ATM Networks)

SNMP: SNMP is a standard TCP/IP Internetwork Management Protocol. It operates on UDP. Primarily used for management of data communication networks. But the scene is changing.

Test Harness Applications:

TL1 TestHarness:
Transaction Language 1 (TL1) is a set of ASCII-based instructions, or "messages," that an operations support system (OSS) uses to manage a network element and its re-sources. TL1 is a widely used management protocol for controlling telecommunications networks through a human understandable instruction set.

The Management entity and the Mediation Services communicate with the TL1 protocol format over TCP/IP.

This Management module provides the user interface either through COMMAND LINE OR through the SCRIPT FILES consisting of sequence of TL1 commands. This is also responsible for updating Log files that comprises of the TL1 Requests, Responses, Acknowledgements and Fault Alarms.

SNMP TestHarness:
SNMP Test Harness is a generic SNMP Manager, which is "WinSNMP compliant" and it supports Level-2 SNMP interaction.

This implies that it supports communications with SNMPv2 agents, in addition to providing full "Level 1" and "Level 0" support that means it provides for….

  • SNMP message encoding and decoding.
  • Use of target agent addresses and community strings
  • Supports the requisite transformations specified in the "Coexistence" document (RFC1452)
  • Supports SNMPv2 PDU formats and MIB-2 structure

This SNMP Manager application is used with the SNMP Agent (part of Mediation Services) to test validate it's functionality.
This application ensures…

  • Consistent processing for SNMP specific functionality
  • Abstraction from the User Interface specific features
  • Complete validation for all conditions
  • Execution of SNMP command scripts.
  • Multiple Log Levels
  • Multiple levels of user interaction.
  • Well-defined interfaces for Transport provision and client provision

Simulation Software for Network Element:

Auto Generation Utility:

TL1 Test Cases Auto Gen Utility:
The purpose of this exercise is to create a utility that will automatically create Test Script files for the TL1 Harness Application. This process will use Lumos generated files and other TL1 Mediation classes as its source of input. The output will be a set of ASCII text script files that can be loaded in the TL1 Test Harness Application with minimal or no modification.

Mediation Services we offer are:

  • Development of Mediation Framework.
  • Support to various management protocols
    • TL1
    • SNMP
    • CLI
    • CMIP
  • Third Party tools used to develop Mediation
    • Lumos
    • ObjectStream
    • Epilogue
    • WinSNMP
    • Test Harness Applications
    • TL1 Test Harness
    • SNMP Test Harness
  • Simulation software
    • TL1 NE
    • SNMP NE
    • Proprietary NE's
  • Auto Generation
    • TL1 Test Script files
    • SNMP Test Script files

Telecom Testing Services:

Our expertise in testing and evaluating telecom products extend to TDM , SONET, SDH, ATM, IP, HDSL and many other communication products.

We offer specialized testing services such as

  • Test Plan preparation
  • Test Procedure Preparation
  • Total Hardware and software testing and trouble shooting at circuit pack level
  • System Integration and testing using sophisticated test instruments such as communication analyzer, BSTS etc.
  • Test automation services
  • Equipment installation and testing
  • Comprehensive after sales service

We use the following mediation services

  • SNMP
  • TL1
  • CMIP
  • Any other relevant mediation services

SpyderWatch - A WebBased Network Management Software

U&I SpyderWatch is Web Based Network Management System Product currently under development at the Bangalore Facility of U & I System Design Ltd. The aim of the software is to provide a generic and extensible network management platform that may be used to manage distributed networks spread across continents by exploiting the global acceptance and connectivity of the Internet.

SpyderWatch is an extremely powerful and very generic Network Management System that uses the Internet messaging backbone to carry out monitoring and control of network services and resources over distributed networks spread across the world.

Features of SpyderWatch The SpyderWatch system is designed to serve as a network management system and must provide support for standard network management requirements related to control and monitoring of network resources and services.

Besides these standard requirements associated to legacy network management services, SpyderWatch is designed to support various analysis and control features that help the network administrator to get detailed information of the network state from various perspectives. The extensible platform supported by SpyderWatch provides a greater level of control and insight to the network administrator thus enabling him to perform management tasks more effectively. SPYDERWATCH is a new approach to managing Internet and Intranet devices and services. SpyderWatch has created a powerful set of integrated tools that is able to easily manage diverse network resources using a Web Browser.

First-generation Web technology dictated using a CGI/HTML solution. However, mimicking a live GUI using a series of forms-based transactions is inadequate. Second-generation Web technology (i.e. Java) promises to export the live GUI through the Web as a dynamically acquired component. SPYDERWATCH provides the necessary platform required to perform reliable network management from within a Web Browser. These components include Java display applets, SPYDERWATCH core classes, SPYDERWATCH Management Services and the Java Virtual Machine.

Click here to view SpyderWatch Brochure

Product Highlights

The main features of SpyderWatch are as follows.

  • DISCOVERY AND NETWORK TOPOLOGY
  • PLATFORM NEUTRAL.
  • "ZERO-INSTALL" CLIENT.
  • "THIN" CLIENT (MINIMAL DOWNLOAD TIME AND OPTIMIZED PERFORMANCE).
  • USE OF EXISTING AND EMERGING STANDARDS (E.G. HTML, JAVA, CORBA, SNMP, DMI).
  • PROTOCOL INDEPENDENT ARCHITECTURE (EXTENSIBLE BEYOND SNMP AND DMI).
  • RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF MANAGEMENT PAGES (I.E. NO CODING REQUIRED).
  • BRIDGES THE GAP BETWEEN TODAY'S REALITY AND TOMORROW'S TECHNOLOGY.
  • FLEXIBLE DISPLAY OF DATA IN BOTH TEXTUAL AND GRAPHICAL MANNERS.
  • SUPPORT FOR EXISTING SNMP AND DMI DEVICES AND SERVICES.
  • BROWSER BASED FUNCTIONAL NETWORK MAPS
  • FAULT MANAGEMENT AND EVENT CORRELATION
  • DEVICE MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT
  • STATISTICAL ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE REPORTS
  • AUTOMATION AND BATCH EXECUTION OF MANAGEMENT OPERATIONS
  • CONFIGURABLE SERVICES, TRIGGERS AND SHORTCUSTS
  • REPORTS, GRAPHS AND USER-INTERFACE PERSONALIZATION
  • RULE-BASED PROCESSING AND AUTOMATIC ACTION

Benefits of Using SpyderWatch
SpyderWatch, being an extensible network management platform with an intuitive and fully configurable control interface offers various benefits, besides those offered by manual management activities and legacy management software. The main benefits are described in this section.

Economics
Manual management of networks or distributed application components and resources is expensive and uneconomical. The main overheads in terms of cost and economics are due to the following factors.

  • Cost of finding, training, and retaining reliable and costly knowledge base.
  • Manual Management is prone to human error.
  • Cost of constant manual monitoring of each device in network.
  • Problems and time in determining a network error.
  • Takes much longer to gather the information and then plan on how to grow the network

Competition
Automated management enables faster growth of network via automated planning and predicting usage trends.

  • It allows for faster deployment of new services.
  • It allows for faster deployment of hardware.
  • It allows for cheaper network, and therefore more competitive pricing of end services.
  • It enables faster use of new and more complex protocols (e.g.: ATM) which might be too costly and complex to integrate manually.

Customer Service
Maximizes service ability by allowing provider to know of problems before customer, and automated problem tracking.

  • It allows for faster fix time for customers.
  • It enables preventative fail over services to deter impact on customer.
  • It enables automated notification to customers, and ongoing status.
  • It allows customers to automatically request new services, and manages their use of services.

Knowledge Factor
Provides for knowledgeable decisions in capacity and planning by providing precise numbers on utilization, errors, etc.

  • It enables "smarter" planning of network growth by knowing exactly what your network utilization is at every link.
  • It allows for maximizing utilization of current resources, by knowing the least utilized resources, you can balance your traffic load.
  • It allows for costing analysis, and business planning, by knowing your customer utilization trends and knowing exactly where are your "problem" areas in the network.

Potential Users
The client for this product is the user of this management platform, who shall use the kit for creation of the network management solution for individual users. The "Client" entity may be a third party organization or the product and service related group within U & I System Design Ltd. These clients must provide the "end-users" with network management solutions that conform to the above-stated requirements. SpyderWatch software finds potential users in the following market segments.

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