Experiences in developing multi-technology TMN systems

Integration of management systems across technological and administrative domain boundaries is a necessary prerequisite for automating or optimising service management. Despite many years of standardisation effort the number of management technologies and interface specifications seems to continue to increase. An architectural approach to integrated network management, therefore, cannot be based on any single architecture or technology, but must instead be based on recognition of diversity and interoperability. The TMN-architecture is basically such an integration architecture, although OSI is sometimes assumed to be the only realisation option. This paper presents experiences with the approach taken to realise integrated network management in the European ACTS project Prospect (project number AC052). Several layers of integration have been realised, including multi-vendor and inter-domain management, and several management technologies have been integrated, namely CORBA, OSI and SNMP