Features, Configuration, and Functions of Telecommunication Management System
Telecommunication management system is the framework of policies, processes, and procedures used by a telecommunication organization to ensure that it can fulfill all the tasks required to achieve its objectives (Van Velson, Rokkam, Truong, & Rasmussen, 2017, November).
Features, configuration, and functions of telecommunication management system
Every feature that network management system has is important, however, collecting and producing insights based on real-time visibility and usage analytics might be at the top of the list (Katis, Panttaja, Panttaja, & Ranney, 2017).
- Signal Coverage- Allows the users to see where the access points are “covering” throughout a facility by overlaying the RF signals over a blueprint of your building or buildings, also known as wifi heat mapping. You can now visualize in real-time how it fluctuates throughout the day.
- Device Connections- gives the data on the end-users and their devices. Things like their IP address, a current signal level they are receiving, what AP’s that client is connected to and the channel they are accessing it on. This gives you the ability to assess the performance and overall health of the wireless connection they’re receiving and allowing you to troubleshoot as necessary in real-time.
- Device Locations- the management system should be able to pinpoint the location of the end-users devices using AP’s they have access, in order for this to work the end-user’s device should be within a certain distance for the APs to “hear” the devices.
The telecommunication management system should allow the business to adapt to a changing environment and it is evolving WLAN design. This means the addition of new access points to support new parts of your business or the increasing numbers of mobile devices and the policies that accompany them.
AP configuration now becomes a breeze, because now instead of configuring each AP separately you can update and configure one and push it out to the rest of the access points.
For many organizations today, compliance is a mission-critical task that has to be properly addressed. Network management systems play a huge role in accomplishing this task effectively and efficiently by providing detailed reporting capabilities.
Managing bandwidth can be a real cost saver and wifi performance booster. You want mission-critical applications to take the forefront and those that are recreational to either be inaccessible or controlled.
Again, this comes back to point that your network is dynamic and has to be constantly monitored at all times to maintain proper performance and quickly troubleshoot problems before they can have a major impact on your network.
In many cases, the insights that a TMS provides will allow IT, teams, to prevent future problems from occurring by revealing bottlenecks as well as areas that might need an extra AP for example.
Fault management is a term used in describing the overall processes and infrastructure associated with detecting, diagnosing, and fixing faults, and returning to normal operations. Roughly speaking, this is referred to in the process industries as “Abnormal Condition Management” (ACM), or a term trademarked by Honeywell (and hence avoided by other vendors): “Abnormal Situation Management” (ASM) (Snee, 2015).
The overall process of managing the complete lifecycle of a fault generally consists of the following steps:
- Immediate discarding of data from obviously-failed sensors, sensors already known to be failed and still likely to be under repair, or undergoing calibration
- Filtering to reduce high-frequency noise
- Event generation (if needed, depending on the techniques used)
- Problem detection
- Problem diagnosis (isolation)
- Predicting the impact of the detected and diagnosed problem
- Event correlation – filtering alarms and grouping correlated messages for a simpler user interface
- Mitigation actions (steps taken while awaiting repairs, to minimize the impact of the problem
- Corrective action (action to repair the problem
- Return to normal operations after repairs are completed
- Postmortem analysis and corrective actions to prevent recurrence or optimize maintenance policy
The problem detection and diagnosis includes sensor problems as well as problems in the monitored equipment and systems.
Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephone or a computer network or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitatively measure the quality of service, several related aspects of the network service are often considered, such as packet loss, bit rate, throughput, transmission delay, availability, jitter, etc.
Real-Time Visibility and Usage Analytics
In the field of computer networking and other packet-switched telecommunication networks, quality of service refers to traffic prioritization and resource reservation control mechanisms rather than the achieved service quality. Quality of service is the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow (Chen, Wu, & Zhang, 2015).
Quality of service is particularly important for the transport of traffic with special requirements. In particular, developers have introduced Voice over IP technology to allow computer networks to become as useful as telephone networks for audio conversations, as well as supporting new applications with even stricter network performance requirements.
In order to successfully monitor your network or even server and systems, the availability of the below options are necessary:
Data or information from various elements in the network. Data includes information about the working, current status & performance, and health of the element being monitored.
An application or monitoring software must be able to collect, process, and present data in a user-friendly format. Software should even alert users about impending problems based on thresholds.
A protocol or method for transmitting information between the monitored element and the monitoring software.
Information collected from the network helps with better management and control over the network, identification of possible network issues before they cause downtime, and quick resolution of issues when something goes wrong. In short, constant monitoring will help create a high performing network (Akkaya, Guvenc, Aygun, Pala, & Kadri, 2015, March).
Below are some of the general techniques available for monitoring. These techniques are used for collection of monitoring data from the network.
- Ping
This is a network admin tool that is used to test the reachability and availability of a host in an IP network. The data from ping results can determine whether a host in the network is active or not. Furthermore, it can measure the transmission time and packet loss when communicating with a host. - Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
SNMP is a network managementprotocol that is used for exchanging information between hosts in a network that includes network monitoring software. This is the most widely used protocol for management and monitoring of the network and includes the below components: Managed device: The node in the network that supports SNMP and access to specific information.- Managed device: The node in the network that supports SNMP and access to specific information.
- Agent: A software that is part of the monitored device. An agent has access to the MIB (management information database) of the device and allows NMS systems to read and write to the MIB.
- Network Management System (NMS): An application on a system that monitors and controls the managed devices through the agent using SNMP commands.
SNMP data is collected or sent to a managed device, either by polling or using traps. Traps allow an agent to send information to an NMS about events on the device.
The MIB holds information about the structure of the data on a device for management. The MIBs contain OID (object identifiers) which is the actual identifier for the variable to be read from the device or set on the device.
- Syslog
Syslog (not to be confused with Windows Eventlog), is a message logging system that allows for a device to send event notifications in IP networks. The information from these messages can be used for system management, as well as security auditing. Syslogs are supported on a variety of devices ranging from printers to routers, and firewalls. - Leveraging the power of scripts
In networks where an NMS is not available for monitoring, or the existing NMS does not support specific functions or even extend the functionality of the existing NMS tool, network admins can make use of scripts. Scripts use common commands, such as ping, netstat, lynx, snmpwalk, etc., that are supported by most network elements to perform an action, such as collecting information from elements, making changes to devise configurations, or perform a scheduled task. Bash scripts, Perl, etc. are common scripting tools used by network admins.
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a business plan that describes how work can be resumed quickly and effectively after a disaster. Disaster recovery planning is just part of business continuity planning and applied to aspects of an organization that relies on an IT infrastructure to function (Sahebjamnia, Torabi, & Mansouri, 2015).
The overall idea is to develop a plan that will allow the IT department to recover enough data and system functionality to allow a business or organization to operate – even possibly at a minimal level.
The creation of a DRP begins with a DRP proposal to achieve upper-level management support. Then a business impact analysis (BIA) is needed to determine which business functions are the most critical and the requirements to get the IT components of those functions operational again after a disaster, either on-site or off-site.
The impact of the workplace and industry environment on the use of a telecommunications management system
High-quality services will always attract more clients and customer will promote the positive impact on the business (Petito,& Petito, 2017). It is a fact that without customers any business will not exist and all the workers in the workplace and industries should know that the better their quality of services is the more the customers are attracted to their services and products.
Reliable services provided is provided by the proper application of telecommunication management systems in the workplace and industry setting. In every business, organization customers come the first priority and their customer satisfaction is necessary (Yang, 2018).
References
Akkaya, K., Guvenc, I., Aygun, R., Pala, N., & Kadri, A. (2015, March). IoT-based occupancy monitoring techniques for energy-efficient smart buildings. In Wireless Communications and Networking Conference Workshops (WCNCW), 2015 IEEE (pp. 58-63). IEEE.
Chen, Y., Wu, K., & Zhang, Q. (2015). From QoS to QoE: A tutorial on video quality assessment. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 17(2), 1126-1165.
Katis, T. E., Panttaja, J. J., Panttaja, M. G., & Ranney, M. J. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,621,491. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Petito, D. A., & Petito, M. P. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,811,805. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Sahebjamnia, N., Torabi, S. A., & Mansouri, S. A. (2015). Integrated business continuity and disaster recovery planning: Towards organizational resilience. European Journal of operations Research, 242(1), 261-273.
Snee, R. D. (2015). Management Holds the Key to Continued Process Verification. Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, January/February, 33-35.
Van Velson, N., Rokkam, S., Truong, Q., & Rasmussen, B. (2017, November). Model-Based Dynamic Control of Active Thermal Management System. In ASME 2017 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (pp. V008T10A060-V008T10A060). American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Yang, B. (2018). Essays on Telecommunications Management: Understanding Consumer Switch, Search and Purchase Behaviors.