TMN: Architecture, Fault Management & Accounting in Networks

This report provides a comprehensive overview of Telecommunication Management Networks (TMN), detailing their architecture, functions, and management systems. It explores the architectural features and functions of network management systems in both common carrier and extended models, highlighting major features, configurations, and functions of management systems, including the ITU-T TMN architecture and network models. The report also examines procedures for fault management and accountability, including techniques for collecting management information from network nodes using interrupts and polling, and discusses enterprise solutions. Furthermore, it delves into the major features and functions of QoS agreements, relevant international standards, and the range and type of possible monitoring parameters for QoS. Finally, the report addresses network management techniques, including how scheduled and on-demand tasks are performed with Enterprise Network Management, and security management procedures, covering authentication, authorization, accounting, and SNMP security, with a brief overview of CNET and its functionalities.

TELECOMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT NETWORK
Introduction:
During the past decade there is an impressive growth in the field of Telecommunication
Networks. In order to initiate and utilize this network effectively, there should be sufficient
network management facility. In the next decade an impressive growth is to be expected in the
use of communication networks. Numerous researches have been conducted in this field. The
Telecommunications industry plays a major role in increasing the efficiency based on the
economy and the society. This also provides major contribution in the development of the
telecommunication sector. In this paper we have dealt regarding the Telecommunication
Management Network (TMN) and the architecture. We have also discussed regarding the
account and fault management technique in a telecommunication sector.
Network Management System:
The network management model provides a goal in achieving the best working network with the
support infrastructure. The architecture should be build up in the form of layers. This layered
structure provides a good communication as well as it decreases the quantity of attentiveness that
is shown to the support operators of the network (Roger, 2010). At the bottom of the layer, it is
not possible to have the events from the individual NMS network infrastructure. For instance, it
is not sufficient to have an individual working on the system log network of every event. Further,
it is possible to depend on the systems at the Network Management Layer (NML) to clean
throughout the events and illustrate the important evens. At the mean time, the Service
Management Layer (SML) gathers all the events from the Network Management Layer and
groups all the compound network management systems. An excellent NMS system could also
afford reduplication of those networks event that could decrease the quantity of unnecessary
messages, which is viewed by the operation’s personnel.
Administrative functions of NMS:
The services provided by the Cisco, adopts the advanced services that adapts the layered,
hierarchical architectural systems. This management system provides a proper data flow with the
efficient combination of several NMS tool. Various tools and relationship among the data
provided by the NMS system of Cisco and their high-level amalgamation circumstance is shown
in the figure given below.

Figure 1: Hierarchical architecture of the Cisco NMS.
TMN Management Functions:
TMN management function works as a management network for the telecommunication
networks. This service forms a minor functional part that provides their services to the major
TMN users. This management forms as a co-operative interaction between the managing and
managed systems. The roles played by the TMN management services are defined within the
scope of TMN management context. They play the key role in allocating the resources within the
context. They function as a set of groups, in order to model the management information and
this could be re-used for the different management areas (Debnath and Shankar, 2008). The
architecture and the network model of TMN is described in the figure given below

Figure 2: TMN architecture and network model
Organizational policies and procedures:
Several agents as well as the managers work in the following fields according to their
capabilities: 1) Operations Systems (OSs) 2) Mediation Devices 3) Network Elements (NEs) and
finally 4) Work Stations or Q Adaptors. The act of agent occurs when there is an interaction
between the function blocks of NEs and Q Adaptors with the OSs and Mediation Devices.
Additional information could be provided by the particular suggestions of TMN Management
Services.
Functions of a management system:
The following Management functional areas as listed in ITU-T M.3010, X.700 and X.701are as
follows:
• Performance Management
• Fault Management
• Configuration Management
• Accounting Management
• Security Management

Fault Management FG:
The fault management is composed of several FEs that purely focuses on the security and
security based alarms and events. The security audit trail information and logs are also focused
by this management team. They have a communication with the OS, in order to transmit the
message that had been generated by the security events and alarms (Kaul, 2008). According to
the ITU-T M.3016.1, the management team should have a proper communication with the FGs
and the other interface modules. The fault management with the several FEs is described in the
figure given below
Figure 3: Fault management FG
Evaluation:
The most widely implemented feature of the ISO network management network is the fault
management, since this could cause a downtime or certain unacceptable network degradation.
The main goal of the fault management deals with the following:
1) Detect the faults that occur during the network communication
2) Separate these fault data from the normal one
3) Send notification of the error detected over the network.

Procedures to avoid fault management:
While working with the parallel system the user has to choose an interrupt based network or a
polling based system. The factors that influence the transaction between the performance and
easy programming could be complicated to an extent. Moreover, cost is also a major concern that
is to be considered. A single poll system is much cheaper since this entirely depends on the
user’s space without context switching. But this does not favor in the application performance
when compared to the single interrupt system, which could provide many new messages to the
device network that could remunerate the single poll system. This process totally depends on the
communicational behavior since poll system needs the user guidance when there is a failure in
the network.
QoS Agreement:
The Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) collects the data of Quality of Service
(QOS) from NEs that could provide support to the network. This QoS data could be send
automatically to TMN on a scheduled source. The TMN has the whole right to modify those
current scheduled or exceptional data. The report that is generated could consist of raw data i.e.,
the data grouped to perform the telecommunication services. This data is further analyzed by the
NE superficially.
Features and functions of QoS agreement:
The scrutinizing and observation of the parameters includes the following parameters:
• Establishing the connections that includes call delays, received calls and failed calls
• Maintenance of connections
• Assuring the quality of connections
• Integration of billing sectors
• Maintaining and analyzing the history logs of the systems
• Maintenance management with the collaboration of faults and failure of the resources and
configuration of load control parameters
• Commencement of test calls to supervise the Quality of Service factors.
Accounting Management:
This management deals with the utilization of the network parameters so that the person or the
user group could be synchronized aptly for the accounting purposes. This is analogous to the
performance management. According to Cisco, Account management could be done by two
methods: 1) NetFlow (network flow) activation and 2) Configuration of IP Accounting. With the
analysis of these data, it provides insights to the present convention patterns. Service Level
Agreement (SLA) promotes the utilized based accounting and billing system. This provides the

terms of behavior within and outside the SLA. Collection of data is done through the probes or
NetFlow. The NetFlow collector gathers all the information and the NetFlow analyzer analyze
the information from various routers and catalyst switches. The IP accounting support of the
Cisco networks promotes the user to view the amount of bytes and switch packets utilized by the
software from the source to the destination. Following commands perform the function, which is
listed in the table given below
Table 1: Description of commands with the suitable interface configuration mode
Command Function
ip accounting Enables basic IP accounting
ip access violation Enables IP accounting with the identification
of IP traffic
Reliability and survivability:
Based on the business estimation, the expansion in the amount of subscribers will improve the
income of telecom industry. This analysis could be in the form of declining tariffs.
Declining Tariffs- Slackening of the telecom industry had increased powerful rivalry that
ultimately emanated a war in the price level to cope up with the market value (Kedia, 2006).
Enlarged rivalry and the consequent levy war have attracted many subscribers towards the tariff.
Meanwhile, industries had a deal with the saturated market that leads to the reduction of the tariff
maintaining the customers.
Business model and Revenue Structures:
In the present scenario, the maximum amount of customers is mainly from the service that
generates a low amount of revenue to the industry. Normally the revenue of the
telecommunication industry is broken in two categories: 1) The commercial voice based industry
that could be generated by the phone calls in which the tariff starts to decline. 2) The non-voice
processing service that involves generation of data services that is currently at a higher margin
rate.

Figure 4: Billing process of the management system
Security management procedures:
The goal of security management is to provide access to network devices and corporate resources
to authorized individuals and to deny access to others. Security management covers the
following areas:
 Authentication
 Authorization
 Accounting
 SNMP Security

CNET:
CNET works with the wide area network (WAN), Local area network (LAN), Wireless local
area network (WLAN). This network simulator works well with the layers of data link, network
and transport protocol of the OSI model that works well with the network reference model.
CNET, atlast produces the application and the physical layer of the OSI/ISO model. The
protocols written by the user should necessarily fill the layers that is interrupted within the
model. This could be done by CNET’s physical layer that arbitrarily introduce the layers.
Advances users may develop some variations in the application layer of the OSI model that
could vary in their message production and coupling of target. The simulation dimension may
differ to few hunderd nodes.
The complete simulation of the network model map could be viewed by Tcl/Tk. This could be
less visual when promoting with the ASCII terminal. The dynamic display in the form of
graphical representation could be done by Tcl/Tk that could allow us to make changes during the
process of simulation. The attributes could be changed depending upon the user’s view. The
checkbox and the sliders could be used to modify the message generation rates and it’s
dimension. Another menu could be used for every node that may be may be enforced to reboot,
(coarsely) crash, (courteously) shutdown and reboot, pause and (hardware) fail.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP):
This is the best known network management for the IP based internetwork and also for the
internet. The SNMP protocol extracts the information from the Management Information Base
(MIB) for managing the stations or entity. The common method to extract information from MIB
is to use the Network management system, which could be either a workstation or PC to send to
the router using the SNMP protocol (Junghagen, 2012). This protocol uses the transport layer
that could be mostly sustained by the UDP port. The trap messages could be sending through the
UDP port 162 and the remaining SNMP messages could be send through the UDP 161. The
operation that involves the process of sending messages involves get, get-next, get response, set
and trap. The representation of the SNMP network is shown in the figure 5

Figure 5: SNMP representation
Additional network handling techniques:
The scheduled and on-demand tasks are performed with the help of Enterprise Network
Management. The work of an Enterprise Network Manager involves the following process
 Necessary for the automation for start/stop of the process
 VM has to be properly shutdown/ restarted
 Implement scripts and confirm its output.
 Automatically making a Backup of network configurations.
 Detect the last changes done on a network device.
Impact on workplace and industries:
Configuration of the network is very necessary that could make an impact in the security, quality
and the reliability of a network service. The changes done are highly tedious that could maximize
the multi-fold when done manually and these needs a very strong tool for managing the network.
An IT pro survey has been carried out, which says about 50% transformation of the network led
to the outages most commonly. In order to take this back we require a configuration management
tool to help us with these happenings. Most of these tasks are repetitive and time consuming.
Automating such management tasks will help admins and technicians save a lot of time and
effort. For example, whenever you get a device down alarm, you will ping the device and do a
trace route to know if there is any packet loss, where exactly it is happening or if the device is
actually down. These repetitive tasks can be automated with workflows.

Disaster recovery plan:
The disaster that could happen in these networks managing process is the loss of data as well as
data insecurity. Sometimes data could be mixed up with some other data that becomes a huge
disaster. In order to avoid these happenings the following measures are considered
 Provide a proper backup to the data
 Separate the data that is necessary for further use, which could prevent mixing od data
 Outdated data should be erased or kept separately
 Provide a proper security lock to the systems.
Conclusion:
In this paper we have successfully dealt with the Telecom Network Management along with the
various Network Management situations by ITU-T and the TMF. We have also successfully
discussed with the SNMP representation that deals with the message passing protocol.
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