Alcatel 1353 NM
Element Manager for Multi-Service Transport Networks
The ever-increasing breed of
communication services (from leased
lines and traditional voice traffic to
Internet and data traffic, mobile
communications, video distribution,
etc.) needs the support of powerful
and flexible transport technologies.
Optical wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM), concatenation
techniques, ATM, MPLS and
Ethernet integration with SDH
technology are all examples of the
efforts to improve the efficiency of the
network while delivering to end
customers a more and more
sophisticated mix of offered services.
Such a demanding and evolving
scenario requires the capability to
flexibly manage “the power of the
network” in a cost-effective way. To
pursue this challenging objective,
Alcatel provides the 1350
management suite which includes the
Alcatel 1353 NM as the single
Element Manager of Alcatel multi-
technology/multi-service networks,
integrating traditional transport
technologies (SDH, WDM) with
emerging data traffic (ATM, MPLS,
Ethernet), mainly coming from Metro
part of network.
(ETSI Version)
Alcatel 1353 NM offers to Network
Operations Centers (NOCs) the
capability to centralize and integrate
the supervision of the full Alcatel
transport NE portfolio (Terrestrial,
Microwave, Submarine) combining
different NE types (1stGen ADMs;
OMSNs; OMSGs; ISA Boards, etc.)
and supporting multiple transmission
technologies (SDH/PDH, WDM, ATM,
Ethernet, MPLS).
Pursuing the concept of “ONE
Element Manager”, able to harmonize
the supervision of different
generations of equipment, bringing
different management interfaces (e.g.
CMIP/SNMP/TL1), is considered a
primary Alcatel goal, in order to
make the management of the mixed
environment – the normal scenario
when networks grow and evolve – the
simplest and most effective possible.
Network Operations benefit from
1353 NM features mainly in the area
of corrective and preventive
maintenance, equipment
provisioning, network administration,
as well as for all operations oriented
to element (NE) management.
In addition 1353 NM is designed to
support 1354 NML applications
and/or integration with "external"
OSs via open interfaces (1359 IOO),
giving visibility to umbrella systems
about network data including Alarms,
Performance Monitoring, NE
Equipment Inventory.
For more information on Alcatel 1350
management suite and 1359 IOO
product, please refer to the relevant
documentation.
This document describes the version of the
Alcatel 1353 NM adapted for ETSI
market.
The Alcatel 1350 management suite
offers the most complete and cost effective
transport management solution that enables
Network Service Providers to efficiently
deliver a full range of services to business
and residential customers.
 Alcatel 1353 NM (ETSI Version)
Fig. 1: Alcatel 1353 NM as ETSI EML for optical/microwave transport networks
Product Overview
From 1353 NM Network Operators
can supervise all the various kinds of
NEs in the transport network
consisting of optical/microwave
transmission, ranging from 1st
Generation SDH Add-Drop
Multiplexers and Radio
terminals/regenerators – still
representing in a number of cases the
major part of Customers’ assets – to
New Generation Optical Multiservice
Nodes/Gateways, where SDH/WDM
technology is combined with data
transport services (ATM, Ethernet).
In addition both terrestrial and
submarine WDM equipment are part
of the managed set.
All the managed equipment share a
common set of tools/components
through which Operators perform
their tasks:
> Corrective maintenance
> Equipment provisioning
> Transmission/Synchronization
provisioning
> Performance Monitoring
> Network Supervision and
Administration
> System Administration
Corrective Maintenance
The quickest reaction to equipment
alarms is by far the most important
task a NOC shall face. Therefore the
EML application is asked to support
OA&M personnel to reach the highest
benchmarks in the time-to-
understand the location, severity, or
duration of any failure occurring in
Fig. 2: Alarm Surveillance: alarm summary, lists and administration facilities
the network.
Like other Alcatel NM applications,
the 1353 NM uses the Alarm
Surveillance (AS) component to
support this challenging task. 1353
NM integrates AS so to exploit all the
advanced fault management features
linked to real- time alarm handling:
> Customization of different alarm
sublists, in which current alarms
can be grouped according to user
settings
> Alarm summary with counters per
sublist
> Comprehensive filtering criteria,
to let Operators focus on a subset
of alarms of interest
> Export and Print facilities
> Alarm severity setting, enabling
to either switch-off secondary
alarms and all alarms from NEs
under special maintenance
activities, or switch-on all alarms
from a given functional block to
perform in-depth diagnostic tasks
> Automatic acknowledgment and
purging actions against alarms of
minor importance (upon user-
defined criteria)
 Alcatel 1353 NM (ETSI Version)

Equipment Provisioning
1353 NM provides a full set of
functions to set-up, initialize, view
and modify the equipment
configuration and its operating
parameters.
Equipment configuration tasks are
performed with the same application
available to the in-field personnel
with the NE Craft Terminal, so
ensuring that NOC staff can easily
align with local operations. Such
tasks include:
> NE creation and configuration
> Board set-up
> Selective alarm inhibition on
equipment under maintenance
> Equipment protection scheme
configuration Fig. 3: Equipment provisioning: Subrack and Port Views

Transmission and since they provide viewing,

Synchronization Provisioning configuration, fault, performance

Transmission and Synchronization management of network-wide

domains can be more effectively services, avoiding operations with NE

managed by 1354 family applications, granularity, for which Operators

themselves are responsible for global
consistency.
However, depending on the network
context, in some cases Operators may
exploit 1353 NM to provision cross-
connections, set-up ring protection
schemes, perform protection
commands, define the payload
structure, etc again using the same
application available with NE Craft
Terminal. In general the 1353 NM
supports all the management
operations offered by the NE itself,
with no restrictions.

Fig. 4: Transmission view

 Alcatel 1353 NM (ETSI Version)
Fig. 5: PM Data Browser: report generation and query facilities
Performance Monitoring
In addition to the alarm surveillance,
Operators can take advantage of the
1353 NM capability to activate,
collect and archive data about the
Quality of the transmission services
provided by the managed NEs at the
different layers.
The management features provided
for Performance Monitoring data are
to be considered a support for either
preventive-maintenance campaigns
or the basis for off-line systems in
charge of archiving and processing
QoS data, e.g. to calculate both SLA
(in case of services sold to third
parties) and SLO (Service Level
Objectives, in case of internal audit)
parameters.
Both SDH error counters compliant to
QoS and Maintenance criteria for
Transport Networks and Data Service
accounting counters (e.g. transmitted
cells or frames) are collected and
stored in 1353 NM database.
In particular, 1353 NM offers:
> Management of threshold crossing
alerts, specific alarms raised when
a given transmission resource
experiences a degradation in the
monitored signal/layer
> Browsing, export and graphical
report generation features over
the PM database stored in the
platform itself
> Query tools to support on-demand
requests for location of resources
below a given quality threshold
Network Supervision &
Administration
In addition to the NE oriented
provisioning tools, sharing the same
"look & feel" of 1320 CT as common
Craft Terminal platform, 1353 NM
supports a set of generic tools able to
address network supervision and
administration tasks on multiple
NEs, even belonging to different
types, so to ease and reduce the
burden of a number of operational
cases.
The most important areas covered by
such tools are:
> DCN configuration/supervision:
Set-up of NE addresses,
monitoring the management
connections (including controls
over connectivity, full automatic
re-synchronization with NEs in
case of temporary DCN failures,
detection of inconsistencies due to
operations performed at Local
Craft Terminal), OSI-over-IP
tunnel configuration, “ping NE”
function
> Centralized visibility of NE
management states: Supervision,
Alignment, Most severe active
alarm, etc. are integrated in
animated icons populating user
Maps
> Centralized control of active
Abnormal Conditions forced by
User Commands
> Query capabilities to count and
locate items of a given Board Type
hosted in the managed equipment
> Centralized/batch-oriented NE
SW distribution for supporting
network upgrades, offering
deferred mode according to a
scheduled time
> Centralized/automatic NE MIB
backup
> Log-oriented viewers to ease
specific diagnostic/audit tasks on
both equipment events and
Operators’ commands
 Alcatel 1353 NM (ETSI Version)
Fig. 6: Network Administration view
System Administration
1353 NM supports a number of
System Administration facilities,
aimed at giving to the Administrators
a set of tools enabling them to set-up
a reliable and secure multi-user
environment.
Operator Management: A
centralized tool, which keeps user
information aligned between Master
and Presentation stations. 1353 NM
provides functions to protect itself
against unauthorized access and
profile application capabilities
against Operators’ hierarchy,
according to both functional access
domain (FAD: mapping Operators’
profile with access to single
management operations) and network
access domain (NAD: defining
resource domains –NE/Ports– to
which Operators have access)
permissions.
Process Configuration &
Monitoring: An application to set-up
and supervise application processes,
tuned according to the network size.
Application Data Backup &
Restore: Network, alarm, PM,
SWDL and Operator repositories can
be backed-up to recover from a
platform crash. Also used to support
NM migration procedures to new
releases.
1353 NM User Interface
1353 NM application provides a
simple but powerful Graphic User
Interface guiding Operators in their
ordinary tasks as well as specific and
more rare operations. The NM
common desktop provides the entry
points to the application areas from
which Operators start their
management activities, allowing then
to activate both generic tools and NE-
specific applications:
> PNM (Map Manager)
> AS (Alarm Surveillance)
> PMDS (PM data browser)
> SMF (System Management)
Moreover, the application components
themselves are highly integrated to
facilitate easy efficient use (e.g.
context navigation between
application components) and where
relevant, replicate the same features
as used at local NE Craft Terminal.
PNM is the network map manager
where NEs, DCN devices and other
non-managed entities (such as
topological links) are displayed
according to a hierarchy-structure of
maps and submaps. The map views
can be built and customized by
Administrators, who then distribute
them to all the other users, so to have
under a central control the network
layout for each group of the NOC
team. A choice of background maps is
available. Local map facilities are
also supported, in the case each
Operator in the NOC organization is
fully responsible for his own maps.
PNM maps are the usual entry-point
for launching network-wide and NE-
specific tools; in particular the “Show
Equipment” option opens the NE
View. Here Operators can navigate
from the quasi-photographic picture
of the equipment rack/subrack down
to the block diagram views of the
SDH/WDM/ATM/Ethernet functional
blocks. This offers all the detailed
information needed to analyze the
status of the Network Element in the
most user-friendly way.
 Alcatel 1353 NM (ETSI Version)
AS is the Alarm Surveillance module,
where all alarms notified by the
managed elements are stored and
displayed according a rich set of
customization facilities. The AS
Sublists concept enables NOC
maintenance teams to be always
focused with the most important and
urgent problems currently active in
the network.
The AS GUI benefits, as well as the
other applications, from the powerful
navigation facilities integrated into
1353 NM. When selecting one or more
alarm records, Operators can
immediately navigate to the detailed
NE Views with one action to show the
affected resource in the most
meaningful context. This provides
immediate information about fault
location and its consequences.
PMDS is the PM data manager,
where all database query and report
generation functions are available to
support Operators, either for
surveying on the long-term quality
trend of the managed resources (e.g.
to check if a set of important
resources are meeting SLO targets) or
for investigating a specific NE/link
behavior (e.g. to understand the
nature of random errors, etc.).
SMF is the System Management
repository, where all the off-line and
administration tools are listed
according to the relevant application
area.
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© 10 2003 Alcatel. All rights reserved. PRELIMINARY Ed.01. Printed in Italy
On-Line Help: For all views and
tasks, a context sensitive on-line-help
system is provided. The network
operator can obtain hints and
explanations to guide him in the
handling of different operational
situations. In addition, the complete
product documentation is accessible
via the online "help" system.
Overall OSS/NM
Management Solution:
Interaction with Other
Applications
As shown in Fig.1, the 1353 NM
application supports interaction with
other applications for:
> Interworking with NML
application (e.g. Alcatel 1354xx) to
permit NML application to
integrate 1353 EMLs and thus
perform relevant NML fault,
configuration, and PM
management of the integrated
network and its
connections/circuits/services
carrying traffic across the whole
network
> NE equipment inventory data
handover to other Operating
Systems application(s)
> Alarm handover to other
Operating Systems application(s)
> PM data handover to other
Operating Systems application(s)
1353 NM application can be
flexibly inserted in an OSS/NM
solution being used to suit a
specific Operator context and
properly matching specific
business, network and
organization needs.
1353 NM Platform Highlights
1353 NM supports a very scalable
platform environment, where the
supporting HP Hardware can be
selected according to a given Operator
context (dimensioning requirements
for network, number of Users; co-
hosting of other NML application on
same server; resilience level…).
The platform architecture is based on
a Master Station, where all database
and NE managers run, plus one or
more Presentation Stations, which
can be Servers supporting PC-based
Operator Positions. Optionally, in
small networks, Master and
Presentation Station functions can be
co-hosted on just one HP machine.
This leaflet provides a product
overview including the major benefits
that end-users can gain from Alcatel
1353 NM (ETSI version).
For a more complete list of product
features and more detailed technical
descriptions, please contact your
Alcatel account representative.
Additional information can be also
found by visiting our
“www.alcatel.com” web site.