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
  • H04L41/08—Configuration management of networks or network elements
  • H04L41/085—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history
  • H04L41/0859—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history by keeping history of different configuration generations or by rolling back to previous configuration versions
  • H04L41/0863—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history by keeping history of different configuration generations or by rolling back to previous configuration versions by rolling back to previous configuration versions
• • 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
  • H04L41/02—Standardisation; Integration
  • H04L41/0213—Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• • 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
  • H04L41/08—Configuration management of networks or network elements
  • H04L41/085—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history
  • H04L41/0853—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information
  • H04L41/0856—Retrieval of network configuration; Tracking network configuration history by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information by backing up or archiving configuration information
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04Q—SELECTING
  • H04Q11/00—Selecting arrangements for multiplex systems
  • H04Q11/04—Selecting arrangements for multiplex systems for time-division multiplexing
  • H04Q11/0428—Integrated services digital network, i.e. systems for transmission of different types of digitised signals, e.g. speech, data, telecentral, television signals
  • H04Q11/0478—Provisions for broadband connections
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04Q—SELECTING
  • H04Q3/00—Selecting arrangements
  • H04Q3/0016—Arrangements providing connection between exchanges
  • H04Q3/0062—Provisions for network management
  • H04Q3/0095—Specification, development or application of network management software, e.g. software re-use
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
  • G06F11/00—Error detection; Error correction; Monitoring
  • G06F11/30—Monitoring
  • G06F11/34—Recording or statistical evaluation of computer activity, e.g. of down time, of input/output operation ; Recording or statistical evaluation of user activity, e.g. usability assessment
  • G06F11/3409—Recording or statistical evaluation of computer activity, e.g. of down time, of input/output operation ; Recording or statistical evaluation of user activity, e.g. usability assessment for performance assessment
  • G06F11/3414—Workload generation, e.g. scripts, playback
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
  • G06F2201/00—Indexing scheme relating to error detection, to error correction, and to monitoring
  • G06F2201/87—Monitoring of transactions
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L12/00—Data switching networks
  • H04L12/54—Store-and-forward switching systems 
  • H04L12/56—Packet switching systems
  • H04L12/5601—Transfer mode dependent, e.g. ATM
  • H04L2012/5629—Admission control
  • H04L2012/563—Signalling, e.g. protocols, reference model

Definitions

• This invention relates to a method of monitoring network transactions, for example, in a wide area network controlled by network management software.
• Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) model, developed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), defines three areas: Element Management, Network Management and Service Management.
• the Element Manager Layer controls the information exchange between network elements or groups of network elements. Functions within this layer communicate with the Network Management Layer by relaying element status and performance to a network management system (NMS).
• NMS network management system
• the Network Management Layer in the TMN Model covers the end-to-end management of an entire network. It contains an overview of the network and knows how elements relate to each other. Focusing on network usage, traffic patterns, bandwidth availability and performance monitoring, the Network Management Layer interacts with the Service Management Layer by exchanging network status information for customer and service data. Responsibilities of the Network Management Layer include: controlling and coordinating the network view of all network elements within its domain, provisioning and modifying network capabilities for customer-service support, maintaining statistical, log and other data about the network and interacting with the Service Management, Layer on performance, usage and availability.
• the Service Management Layer is the service provider's first point of contact with customers for all service transactions, including service requests and fault reporting, interaction with other service providers, and maintaining statistical data and interaction between services.
• the present state of the art transaction roll-forward on a network element is to log all node (network element) affecting transactions from the last node backup. In the event of a failure all logs are re-applied to the node.
• a major shortcoming to this approach is the fact that the node has a limited context.
• the node logs only incorporate node affecting transaction, not necessarily element or network management transactions.
• an element management transaction "X" may be composed of node transactions a, b and c.
• the node will try and replay a, b and c. If a fails, b and c should not be applied because they are part of X which needs to be fully applied or not at all.
• the node logs have no knowledge of X. The result will be that the node and the applications supporting the node are in a inconsistent state.
• An object of the invention is to overcome this problem.
• a transaction log is maintained about a node, and during playback the application replays the original knowledge context of the transaction, and if this replayed mechanism fails, a transaction rollback mechanism is invoked to restore both the application and the node to a mutually consistent state.
• the invention By implementing centralized transaction logging the invention now maintains a log similar to the nodes.
• the invention implements a playback which relies on the application to replay the original knowledge of the context of the transaction. If this "replayed" transaction fails than the applications transaction rollback mechanism is invoked and restores both the application and the node to a mutually consistent state.
• steps are taken to ensure that the log is played back in a synchronized fashion to ensure node and application consistency.
• the invention can be applied to any situation where a node is modified by a multi stage transaction and may at a later time need to be restored.
• FIG 1 is an overview of an ATM network to which the inventive system may be applied;
• FIG. 2 is an overview of a system in accordance with the invention.
• Figure 3 shows a roll forward of transactions
• Figure 4 shows a cross connect creation
• Figure 5 shows a cross connect roll forward.
• FIG. 1 shows the general architecture of a system to which the invention is applicable.
• An ATM network manager is managed by a commander 2 implementing the present invention, which communicates with the network manager via a protocol Qs, which is a published interface from Newbridge Networks Corporation.
• the switch must be in a consistent state at the end of the recovery to reduce requirement for manual intervention.
• the logging daemon 3 is responsible for logging the transaction, playing back the transaction, backing up the switch and restoring the transaction.
• the data required for logging and playback is the switch address, the time, the application, the user id, description and data.
• This feature is intended for use by customers when a catastrophic event has caused the EWSX switch to require a reboot from a backup. This feature enables returning the Node to the state it was just before the catastrophe by performing a roll forward of transactions sent to the Node since the last backup.
• the ATM-C Roll Forward is a product which supports the Siemens EWSXpress V3 ATM switch and applications. It provides a mechanism for the recovery of the Node from a catastrophe via the roll forward of transactions performed on the Node since a backup was performed.
• a central process on the ATMC receives messages containing information on all transactions performed on the Node.
• the feature logs the transactions in separate file for each node.
• Applications such as CR, SS7 etc. use the ATMC API Logging function to send the logging messages to the proper ATMC controlling the Node. It is assumed that only transactions that are successfully applied to the node are logged. This implies that the logging of transactions must be done by the application only at the end of the transaction.
• the transaction itself contains a time stamp indicating when it has started. This information is used for the sequence of roll forward.
• the Roll Forward of transactions enables the restoration of the Node Database to its state from before a catastrophic failure. Proper recovery of all the data requires synchronization between all the applications controlling the Node. This feature controls the sequence at which transaction that were applied to the node before the crash are being send to the node. This feature reads the log file generated by the logging mechanism.
• Application name Is a string used for identification of the application logging the transaction. This is displayed to the user during the Manual roll forward and as an identifier to the roll forward mechanism of the application performing the transaction during the roll forward.
• DataSize The size of the data in bytes. WaitCompletion: See below.
• This interface opens a socket connection that accepts messages from the Roll forward Application.
• the return value is a file descriptor that can be use in a select statement.
• the first parameter is the size of the logged data.
• the second parameter a void pointer to the logged Data.
• the third parameter indicates whether the roll forward process is going to wait for a completion message from the application, when it is set to 1 the application must use RollForwardSendConfirmation once it is safe to roll forward the next transaction. This is set to 1 only if the WaitCompletion flag was set to 1 when the application has logged the transaction.
• This command must be used if the WaitCompletion Flag was set to 1 in the RollForwardGetAction request. Use this function to indicate to the roll forward mechanism that the application is ready to receive the next transaction. This function is used only by applications that set the WaitCompletion flag in the logging record.
• the roll forward application On startup the roll forward application will get the information of the node requiring roll forward, the time at which the last backup has been performed. (This feature assumes that the backup generation was already applied to the node). Then, It will scan the log file and determine the list of applications that were active during the time from the backup.
• the roll forward application will attempt to connect to all the applications obtained in the previous step. If any of the application fails to respond the roll forward application prompts the user to start the application manually on the appropriate machine.
• RollForward During manual roll forward the RollForward application prompts the user before each transaction is send to the other applications for execution.
• the Roll Forward application will send a Finish message to all the other applications.
• the following example is an example of creation of a cross connect. This type of operation is a very typical one on the ATMC and at any given time we might have multiple cross connect transactions in operation.
• connection represented by Object 1 will be inactive while the connection represented by Object 2 is going to be active. This is in contrast to the original state of the connections where the connection represented by Object 1 was active and the connection represented by object 2 was inactive.
• Q3 logging at the object level is the original proposal prepared for CR/SS7.
• the application is logging the Q3 objects just before they send the command to the Node.
• the Roll Forward agent will perform similar tasks to the ones described above.
• the only difference between is that instead of sending the Q3 actions to the applications for execution the BER data of the Q3 actions is converted to a Vertel Object representing the Q3 command (Using features of the Vertel Stack T.B.D) and the action is than sent to the Node for execution.
• Q3 is a standards based interface for managing network elements. The Siemens EWSX V3 is managed via a Q3 interface.
• the invention is applicable to any situation where a node is modified by a multi stage transaction emitted from multiple applications and may at a later time need to be restored.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Computer Networks & Wireless Communication (AREA)
• Signal Processing (AREA)
• Computer And Data Communications (AREA)
• Data Exchanges In Wide-Area Networks (AREA)

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• 1997
  • 1997-11-20 CA CA 2221661 patent/CA2221661A1/en not_active Abandoned
• 1998
  • 1998-11-19 EP EP98955287A patent/EP1031255A1/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 1998-11-19 WO PCT/CA1998/001074 patent/WO1999027750A1/en not_active Ceased

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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