Being a market leader in providing stand-alone Protocol Analyzers, Sunrise Telecom Protocol Products Group has easily understood the need, coming mainly from the Network Operation Centers (NOC) for independent monitoring tools that provide a clear end-to-end view of service across the entire network.

Of equal importance is the need to proactively identify potential service-impacting hotspots in the network, assist the operator in identifying the root cause, and help prioritize action plans based on customer impact information.

In order to support these needs, it becomes essential that stand-alone, dispersed solutions for network surveillance be eliminated in favor of a single integrated NMS that offers ease of operability and effective network and service management.

The TAMS (Traffic Analysis and Monitoring System) is a flexible and cost-effective network maintenance and diagnostic solution for Wireline, Wireless, VoIP Service Providers and Carriers. Each probe unit supports between 4 and 32 E1/T1 links up to 8 LAN links and STM-1 connections as well, providing a complete network monitoring solution for both small and large service providers, without high overhead cost. A provider can deploy the system in small increments and expand it as its requirements grow.

TAMS supplies tools for all phases of Telecommunications Network’s fault management in one integrated platform. The system indicates network faults as well as provides tools for problem isolation, analysis, and resolution verification.

Recognizing the technological burden imposed on providers, Sunrise Telecom has improved TAMS design for ease-of-use.

TAMS reduces service providers?costs for network operation and maintenance, preserving capital equipment and personnel investments.

TAMS has been designed to be the main system to collect data in multi-protocols environment like Wireline, Wireless and VoIP networks, and to transform raw data into information useful for multiple departments:

Summarizing, the objective of the TAMS design was to provide an integrated tool for the following needs:

• Addressing both Signalling and Traffic Monitoring
• Provide NOCs with network-independent monitoring facility
• Provide active support for call diagnostics
• Provides multiple views and reports at different user levels
• Proactively monitor sessions for each service and each customer
• Proactively monitor Service Quality for each service and each customer
• Effectively diagnose a problem to identify the root cause
• Ensure SLA’s and regulatory requirements are met
• Provide CDR warehousing
• Provide data feeds to other OSS systems that support functionality such as Fraud Management and Revenue Assurance
• Easy integration into customer’s alarm management OSS

Overview

A schematic of the TAMS solution is shown below.

TAMS is a probe-based solution that captures signalling information for each leg of a call irrespective of the type of network the call traversed (TDM,IP) and then passes on this information to the signalling/traffic monitoring system to build a single end-to-end view of the call.

Signalling/traffic data will be collected by probes from the network and assembled into individual call detail records within the monitoring system.

User interaction will be with the presentation layer which will support all real-time and elapsed-time requirements.

The main purpose of the TAMS system is to provide a unified environment which would enable call trace, call correlation, see traffic alarms, view traffic flows graphically and identify traffic hotspots.

TAMS: Concepts and Results

TAMS continuously collects from the probes two kind of basic information: Call Detail Records (CDR) and Protocol Messages. The CDRs are generated by the probes for all the monitored transactions, including the unsuccessful ones, and are stored on a powerful Oracle?database.The Protocol Messages are stored on high performance proprietary file system for off-line troubleshooting and CDR drill-down analysis.

Upon the information above, TAMS provides the following features.

Voice QoS over live user traffic
TAMS can provide the real-time scoring of the Quality of Service (MOS and R-Factor) onto live subscriber's audio traffic.

Traffic Analysis
The storage of the CDRs onto the local database is a valuable source of information. Depending on the customer's requirement, the system provides reports and statistics about the traffic behavior. The users access the system results by means of WEB interface. The system can be easily customized to meet the specific customer's requirements.

Call Completion Analysis
TAMS provides an extensive set of Key Performance Indicators to measure the calls behavior, as like as ASR, ABR, Call Summary and Disconnection Cause Analysis. The indicators can be obtained upon specific routes as like as Origination/Destination IP Addresses, Origination/Destination Point Codes, or Called/Calling Numbers.

Multi Protocol Correlated Trace
TAMS can easily correlate different protocols offering a unified view of the entire call, by means of ladder diagrams, regardless the different technologies involved.

Alarms on thresholds
TAMS can be programmed to generate customizable alarms upon thresholds, related to all the available indicators.

Off-line analysis over recorded data
TAMS allows off-line protocol analysis including searching and filtering over months of data to perform troubleshooting for problems happened in the past.

Audio recording and listening TAMS can collect and store files containing the audio recordings. Each audio file can be listened from the Call Detail Record it refers to.

TAMS and the Revenue Assurances Applications

Sunrise Telecom has agreements with important companies in the Revenue Assurance area. Due to these agreements, TAMS can act as Mediation Device exporting the col-lected data to applications like:

• Fraud Detection
• Billing verification
• Interconnection Revenue Management
• Margin Analysis
• Least Cost Routing

TAMS for System Integrators

TAMS is the ideal platform for System Integrators that must gather data from the signalling network and integrate Protocol Analysis functions into their applications. Beside the CDRs that are stored onto Oracle Database and are accessible through standard methods like ODBC, it is possible to access the raw protocol messages by means of documented APIs based on CORBA standard. In example, the API allows the following operations:

• Login/logoff a user to the Server
• Activate/deactivate a Protocol Analysis session
• Browse the captured data to obtain raw messages
• Activate/deactivate a Call Trace session
• Browse frames belonging to a specific CDRs stored into the database

Technology

• Scalable system based on Oracle Database
• Enhanced client-server graphical interface WEB based
• Vendor-independent (referring to the network elements)
• Multi-protocol
• Multi-user