WO2005081510A1 - System for and method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element - Google Patents

System for and method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element Download PDF

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Publication number
WO2005081510A1
WO2005081510A1 PCT/IB2005/000128 IB2005000128W WO2005081510A1 WO 2005081510 A1 WO2005081510 A1 WO 2005081510A1 IB 2005000128 W IB2005000128 W IB 2005000128W WO 2005081510 A1 WO2005081510 A1 WO 2005081510A1
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WO
WIPO (PCT)
Prior art keywords
network element
alarms
data file
file buffer
buffer
Prior art date
Application number
PCT/IB2005/000128
Other languages
French (fr)
Inventor
Henko Gouws
Johannes Jacob Vorster
Original Assignee
Telkom Sa Limited
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Telkom Sa Limited filed Critical Telkom Sa Limited
Publication of WO2005081510A1 publication Critical patent/WO2005081510A1/en

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Classifications

    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
    • H04L41/00—Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
    • H04L41/06—Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications
    • H04L41/069—Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications using logs of notifications; Post-processing of notifications

Definitions

  • THIS invention relates to a system for and method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element.
  • OMT Operations and Maintenance Terminal
  • the OMT 100 is connected to the network element 102, with a serial program 104 being used to read the received alarms via a hardware feed 106 from an external serial cable receiver of a primary serial port 108 of the OMT terminal 100 to a receiver of a secondary serial port 110 of the OMT terminal 100. Thereafter, the alarms get forwarded to a remote Network Fault Management System (NFMS) for processing.
  • NFMS remote Network Fault Management System
  • a system for collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element the network element being connected to a terminal unit that is fitted with a serial port
  • the system comprising: a data file buffer for temporarily storing the alarms received from the network element; a modified serial driver for not only allowing conventional serial applications to run on the network element but for also non- intrusively collecting and forwarding the alarms received from the network element to the data file buffer; a serial buffer reader for reading the data stored in the data file buffer; and a communications network for allowing the alarms stored in the data file buffer to be sent to a remote control station.
  • the data file buffer is a fixed-size file buffer.
  • a method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element comprising the steps of: forwarding the alarms received from the network element to a data file buffer; temporarily storing the alarms in the data file buffer; continually monitoring the data file buffer to determine when a new alarm has been received; reading the data stored in the data file buffer; and sending the alarms stored in the data file buffer to a remote control station via a communications network.
  • Figure 1 shows a schematic block diagram of a system for collecting and reporting alarms from a telecommunications network element according to the invention
  • Figure 2 shows a schematic block diagram of a non-intrusive sniffer agent used in the system illustrated in Figure 1 ;
  • FIG. 3 shows a more detailed block diagram of the sniffer agent
  • Figure 4 shows a prior art system for forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element.
  • a system 10 for collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element 12 comprises a sniffer agent 14 that is non-intrusively connected to and in communications with an Operations and Maintenance Terminal (OMT) 16 that is in turn connected to the telecommunications network element 12.
  • OMT Operations and Maintenance Terminal
  • the OMT 16 communicates with the telecommunications network element 12 via a serial cable, with the OMT 16 running appropriate software, as described above.
  • the sniffer agent 14 is also a software application that gets executed on the same machine that runs the OMT software, namely the OMT 16 itself.
  • network element is meant to include but not be limited to the following components:
  • the OMT software uses the serial port driver on the OMT computer 16 to read the serial data sent by the telecommunications network element 12. Each time the OMT software reads new characters from the telecommunications network element 12 the serial driver writes the new characters into a buffer.
  • the sniffer agent 14 in turn forwards the information via a tcp/ip network 18 to a remote Network Fault Management System (NFMS) 20.
  • NFMS Network Fault Management System
  • a Kernel Mode serial driver 22 which is part of the OMT software running on the OMT 16, is modified so that, apart from its normal operation as used by other serial applications 24, it also writes all the received serial characters, which in the present application are by definition "alarms", into a persistent buffer 26 in the Application Space.
  • the present invention is able non-intrusively to collect and forward the alarm signals from the telecommunications network element 12 to the NFMS 20.
  • the persistent buffer 26 is used as a round buffer, which will be explained in more detail further on in the specification.
  • the sniffer agent 14 continually reads the persistent buffer 26 to see if new characters have been received. If new characters have been received, then the sniffer agent 14 sends the characters to a network destination (i.e. NFMS 20) via a tcp/ip connection 28 to the tcp/ip network 18.
  • a network destination i.e. NFMS 20
  • the OMT software on the OMT computer 16 opens the Kernel Mode serial driver 22 to communicate with the telecommunications network element 12 via a serial port 30 of the OMT 16, typically a RS232 serial port.
  • the OMT software periodically reads new received serial characters from the Kernel Mode serial driver 22.
  • the modified Kernel Mode serial driver 22 also writes the received characters into a round buffer in the fixed-size persistent buffer file 26.
  • the operation of the round buffer is as follows. There is a write pointer that consumes the first five bytes of the file and a buffer that consumes the rest of the file. Each time new characters are read via the Kernel Mode serial driver the same characters are written to the buffer and the write pointer is incremented with the number of characters. The write pointer therefore always points to the last character written. If the number of the characters to be written extends beyond the fixed size of the buffer then the write pointer wraps around and continues at the start of the fixed buffer - hence the name round buffer.
  • the sniffer agent 14 maintains an internal variable called a read-pointer and uses this variable to see if new characters have arrived in the round buffer. Each time a character is read, by means of a serial buffer reader 32, the read-pointer is incremented and also wraps around if the end of the buffer is reached. The sniffer agent 14 continues reading until the read-pointer equals the write-pointer.
  • the sniffer agent 14 is shown in more detail, with components that have already been described above being indicated with the same reference numerals.
  • An important requirement for the sniffer agent 14 is security.
  • the security boundary is depicted in Figure 3 by dotted outline 34.
  • the sniffer agent 14 uses the built-in NT security mechanisms for security, with access only being granted to users with Administration rights for modification. NT access lists control access to a Named Pipe link 36 and a Registry 38.
  • the sniffer agent 14 consists of three main parts: the configuration 40, the status viewer 42 and the sniffer agent service indicated by broken outline 44.
  • the sniffer agent service 44 is an NT service that is configured to start automatically when the OMT computer 16 starts up. The NT service is also automatically restarted if it is detected that the service has stopped.
  • the configuration of the sniffer agent 14 is stored in the registry 38 and viewed/modified using a configuration graphic user interface (GUI) 46.
  • GUI configuration graphic user interface
  • the sniffer status is viewed by the status viewer 42 application that receives sniffer agent status updates via the named pipe link 36.
  • the present invention discloses a non-intrusive RS232 port sniffer with alarm forwarding capability via a data network.
  • the concept entails a modified serial port driver that captures the received serial data in a non-intrusive way and forwards the data to a fault management system via a data network using a software agent.
  • the sniffer agent 14 thus allows the existing Operations and Maintenance programs to keep on communicating with the network element 12 via the serial port 30, while the sniffer agent 14 non-intrusively captures serial data (i.e. alarm information) via the same port and transmits it across a data network.
  • the advantages of the sniffer include the following: 1. It does not require any hardware modifications or external additions or hardwiring. 2. It does not require any special serial port settings such as baud rate, stop bits, parity etc because the application that makes use of the Kernel Mode serial driver sets up the communications parameters. 3. It does not require an extra serial port to poll the received data with. 4.
  • the sniffer operates non-intrusively and therefore no modification/s are required to existing applications running on the OMT computers. 5.
  • the sniffer can execute on the same PC as the OMT computer and does not require any additional costs. 6. No characters are lost. The sniffer also receives all the characters received by the OMT.
  • the sniffer agent 14 of the present invention is preferred to the other alarm collection and forwarding options because, in comparison to existing aggregation systems, it receives all the types of alarms and alarms are not dropped.
  • the sniffer agent 14 is preferred to the hardware loop arrangement shown in Figure 4 because it does not require external serial cable modifications and/or hardwired loops and does not require an extra serial port.

Abstract

The present invention discloses a system (10) for, and associated method of, collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element (12), the network element (12) being connected to a terminal unit (16) that is fitted with a serial port. The system (10) comprises a data file buffer for temporarily storing the alarms received from the network element (12), a modified serial driver for allowing conventional serial applications to run on the network element (12) and for non-intrusively collecting and forwarding the alarms received from the network element (12) to the data file buffer, a serial buffer reader for reading the data stored in the data file buffer, and a communications network (18) for allowing the alarms stored in the data file buffer to be sent to a remote control station (20).

Description

SYSTE FOR AND METHOD OF COLLECTING AND FORWARDING ALARMS FROM A TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK ELEMENT
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
THIS invention relates to a system for and method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element.
The need to accurately and efficiently collect and forward alarms detected in a telecommunications network is of utmost importance. At present, there are numerous ways in which this is done. One way is to collect the alarms using an aggregation system, but in such a system not all types of alarms are received and in certain circumstances some alarms are dropped.
Another way, as shown in Figure 4, is to capture alarms directly from an Operations and Maintenance Terminal (OMT) 100, which typically takes the form of a computer running appropriate OMT software 101. The OMT 100 is connected to the network element 102, with a serial program 104 being used to read the received alarms via a hardware feed 106 from an external serial cable receiver of a primary serial port 108 of the OMT terminal 100 to a receiver of a secondary serial port 110 of the OMT terminal 100. Thereafter, the alarms get forwarded to a remote Network Fault Management System (NFMS) for processing. This arrangement, however, has a number of limitations, including the fact that some OMT terminals do not have a secondary serial port. A further disadvantage of this arrangement is that the addition of the external feed represents an additional cost.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a system for and method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element that address the above shortcomings. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a system for collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element, the network element being connected to a terminal unit that is fitted with a serial port, the system comprising: a data file buffer for temporarily storing the alarms received from the network element; a modified serial driver for not only allowing conventional serial applications to run on the network element but for also non- intrusively collecting and forwarding the alarms received from the network element to the data file buffer; a serial buffer reader for reading the data stored in the data file buffer; and a communications network for allowing the alarms stored in the data file buffer to be sent to a remote control station.
Preferably, the data file buffer is a fixed-size file buffer.
According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided a method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element, the network element being connected to a terminal unit that is fitted with a serial port, the method comprising the steps of: forwarding the alarms received from the network element to a data file buffer; temporarily storing the alarms in the data file buffer; continually monitoring the data file buffer to determine when a new alarm has been received; reading the data stored in the data file buffer; and sending the alarms stored in the data file buffer to a remote control station via a communications network.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
Figure 1 shows a schematic block diagram of a system for collecting and reporting alarms from a telecommunications network element according to the invention;
Figure 2 shows a schematic block diagram of a non-intrusive sniffer agent used in the system illustrated in Figure 1 ;
Figure 3 shows a more detailed block diagram of the sniffer agent; and
Figure 4 shows a prior art system for forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element.
DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS
Referring first to Figure 1 , a system 10 for collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element 12 comprises a sniffer agent 14 that is non-intrusively connected to and in communications with an Operations and Maintenance Terminal (OMT) 16 that is in turn connected to the telecommunications network element 12. The OMT 16 communicates with the telecommunications network element 12 via a serial cable, with the OMT 16 running appropriate software, as described above. Typically, the sniffer agent 14 is also a software application that gets executed on the same machine that runs the OMT software, namely the OMT 16 itself.
The term "network element" is meant to include but not be limited to the following components:
1.1 EWSD switch (exchange)
1.2 Alcatel A9800 DECT equipment
1.3 DRMASS access equipment
1.4 Rurtel access equipment
The OMT software uses the serial port driver on the OMT computer 16 to read the serial data sent by the telecommunications network element 12. Each time the OMT software reads new characters from the telecommunications network element 12 the serial driver writes the new characters into a buffer. The sniffer agent 14 in turn forwards the information via a tcp/ip network 18 to a remote Network Fault Management System (NFMS) 20.
Turning now to Figure 2, from the block diagram it can be seen that a Kernel Mode serial driver 22, which is part of the OMT software running on the OMT 16, is modified so that, apart from its normal operation as used by other serial applications 24, it also writes all the received serial characters, which in the present application are by definition "alarms", into a persistent buffer 26 in the Application Space. In so doing, the present invention is able non-intrusively to collect and forward the alarm signals from the telecommunications network element 12 to the NFMS 20.
The persistent buffer 26 is used as a round buffer, which will be explained in more detail further on in the specification. The sniffer agent 14 continually reads the persistent buffer 26 to see if new characters have been received. If new characters have been received, then the sniffer agent 14 sends the characters to a network destination (i.e. NFMS 20) via a tcp/ip connection 28 to the tcp/ip network 18.
The OMT software on the OMT computer 16 opens the Kernel Mode serial driver 22 to communicate with the telecommunications network element 12 via a serial port 30 of the OMT 16, typically a RS232 serial port. The OMT software periodically reads new received serial characters from the Kernel Mode serial driver 22. The modified Kernel Mode serial driver 22 also writes the received characters into a round buffer in the fixed-size persistent buffer file 26.
The operation of the round buffer is as follows. There is a write pointer that consumes the first five bytes of the file and a buffer that consumes the rest of the file. Each time new characters are read via the Kernel Mode serial driver the same characters are written to the buffer and the write pointer is incremented with the number of characters. The write pointer therefore always points to the last character written. If the number of the characters to be written extends beyond the fixed size of the buffer then the write pointer wraps around and continues at the start of the fixed buffer - hence the name round buffer. The sniffer agent 14 maintains an internal variable called a read-pointer and uses this variable to see if new characters have arrived in the round buffer. Each time a character is read, by means of a serial buffer reader 32, the read-pointer is incremented and also wraps around if the end of the buffer is reached. The sniffer agent 14 continues reading until the read-pointer equals the write-pointer.
The reason why a fixed-size buffer file 26 has been used is because the sniffer agent 14 is running in the application environment and the Kernel Mode serial driver 22 is running in a Kernel environment, and code running in the two environments cannot access one another directly.
Referring now to Figure 3, the sniffer agent 14 is shown in more detail, with components that have already been described above being indicated with the same reference numerals. An important requirement for the sniffer agent 14 is security. The security boundary is depicted in Figure 3 by dotted outline 34. The sniffer agent 14 uses the built-in NT security mechanisms for security, with access only being granted to users with Administration rights for modification. NT access lists control access to a Named Pipe link 36 and a Registry 38.
The sniffer agent 14 consists of three main parts: the configuration 40, the status viewer 42 and the sniffer agent service indicated by broken outline 44. The sniffer agent service 44 is an NT service that is configured to start automatically when the OMT computer 16 starts up. The NT service is also automatically restarted if it is detected that the service has stopped. The configuration of the sniffer agent 14 is stored in the registry 38 and viewed/modified using a configuration graphic user interface (GUI) 46. The sniffer status is viewed by the status viewer 42 application that receives sniffer agent status updates via the named pipe link 36.
To summarise, the present invention discloses a non-intrusive RS232 port sniffer with alarm forwarding capability via a data network. The concept entails a modified serial port driver that captures the received serial data in a non-intrusive way and forwards the data to a fault management system via a data network using a software agent.
The sniffer agent 14 thus allows the existing Operations and Maintenance programs to keep on communicating with the network element 12 via the serial port 30, while the sniffer agent 14 non-intrusively captures serial data (i.e. alarm information) via the same port and transmits it across a data network.
The advantages of the sniffer include the following: 1. It does not require any hardware modifications or external additions or hardwiring. 2. It does not require any special serial port settings such as baud rate, stop bits, parity etc because the application that makes use of the Kernel Mode serial driver sets up the communications parameters. 3. It does not require an extra serial port to poll the received data with. 4. The sniffer operates non-intrusively and therefore no modification/s are required to existing applications running on the OMT computers. 5. The sniffer can execute on the same PC as the OMT computer and does not require any additional costs. 6. No characters are lost. The sniffer also receives all the characters received by the OMT.
The sniffer agent 14 of the present invention is preferred to the other alarm collection and forwarding options because, in comparison to existing aggregation systems, it receives all the types of alarms and alarms are not dropped. In addition, the sniffer agent 14 is preferred to the hardware loop arrangement shown in Figure 4 because it does not require external serial cable modifications and/or hardwired loops and does not require an extra serial port.

Claims

1. A system for collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element, the network element being connected to a terminal unit that is fitted with a serial port, the system comprising: a data file buffer for temporarily storing the alarms received from the network element; a modified serial driver for allowing conventional serial applications to run on the network element and for non- intrusively collecting and forwarding the alarms received from the network element to the data file buffer; a serial buffer reader for reading the data stored in the data file buffer; and a communications network for allowing the alarms stored in the data file buffer to be sent to a remote control station.
2. A system according to claim 1 , wherein the data file buffer is a fixed- size file buffer.
3. A method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element, the network element being connected to a terminal unit that is fitted with a serial port, the method comprising the steps of: forwarding the alarms received from the network element to a data file buffer; temporarily storing the alarms in the data file buffer; continually monitoring the data file buffer to determine when a new alarm has been received;
reading the data stored in the data file buffer; and
sending the alarms stored in the data file buffer to a remote control station via a communications network.
PCT/IB2005/000128 2004-01-20 2005-01-19 System for and method of collecting and forwarding alarms from a telecommunications network element WO2005081510A1 (en)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
ZA200307779 2004-01-20
ZA2003/7779 2004-01-20

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Citations (5)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN1226773A (en) * 1997-12-31 1999-08-25 深圳市华为技术有限公司 System communication control device for synchronous digit transferring arrangement
US6161201A (en) * 1998-02-26 2000-12-12 3Com Corporation Method and apparatus for concurrent interaction with a modem having an open connection
US6343263B1 (en) * 1994-08-02 2002-01-29 Apple Computer, Inc. Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data
US20020069199A1 (en) * 2000-12-01 2002-06-06 Young-Hyun Kang Method for managing alarm information in a network management system
US20020099786A1 (en) * 2000-12-01 2002-07-25 Eung-Sun Chun Alarm management system and method thereof for network management system

Patent Citations (5)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US6343263B1 (en) * 1994-08-02 2002-01-29 Apple Computer, Inc. Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data
CN1226773A (en) * 1997-12-31 1999-08-25 深圳市华为技术有限公司 System communication control device for synchronous digit transferring arrangement
US6161201A (en) * 1998-02-26 2000-12-12 3Com Corporation Method and apparatus for concurrent interaction with a modem having an open connection
US20020069199A1 (en) * 2000-12-01 2002-06-06 Young-Hyun Kang Method for managing alarm information in a network management system
US20020099786A1 (en) * 2000-12-01 2002-07-25 Eung-Sun Chun Alarm management system and method thereof for network management system

Non-Patent Citations (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Title
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