Carrier and Customer Management of Fast Packet Services and ATM

Fast Packet Services such as Frame Relay Service (FRS), Switched Multi-megabit Data Service (SMDS), and Cell Relay Service (CRS) are being deployed by Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) to support LAN interconnection over a wide area, fast image transport, and via Cell Relay Service, a mix of voice, video and data on the same ATM-based interface. Typically, LECs are looking to ATM technology as the basis for their networks supporting these services. These services offered on ATM platforms will seamlessly interwork with these services on pre-ATM platforms. LECs, with Bellcore support, are developing management strategies for these services and technologies that provide consistent and effective support for both the LECs own management needs as well as supporting the customers' need to manage the services they are using. A multi-layer management architecture is proposed that promotes faster introduction and support through the use of element management systems. The challenge of managing multiple services over ATM platforms has been met by appropriate partitioning of the operations requirements consistent with the protocol architecture in the switching systems and interfaces. These operations capabilities support logical configuration management, pro-active maintenance, efficient trouble sectionalization, and appropriate traffic collection for traffic management and network engineering. In addition, an information model has been defined for the Switch-to-Management System interface that provides for consistent,non-redundant managed object specifications. Further, a rich set of capabilities has been defined for Customer Network Management based on the use of SNMP as the management application protocol. 0-7803-181 1-0/94$04.0001994IEEE 576