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MSO Network Operation CentreGraeme Spice

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Requirements

• Round the clock surveillance and support for a complex network supporting Voice, Broadcast Media and Broadband services– Diversity in vendors and equipment– Diversity in operational support systems– Multiple support parties

• This Diversity creates multiple streams of data from the network and systems as well as your customers.

• Poorly designed NOC’s require a lot of people looking at a lot of screens - this is to be avoided.

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Requirements cont.• Operations Center should have full management capabilities for all

technologies – can’t be managed if it can’t be seen.– Fault detection (Reactive monitoring including video surveillance)– Fault resolution (troubleshooting)– Performance & Capacity data (Pro-active monitoring)– Network & MSP Workforce Orchestration– Change and Configuration Management of the Network – Change

Governance.– SLA measurement and reporting

• One common management that environment that can:– Monitor MSO-wide network status and identify alarms using a single

network map– Track all outages for network performance reporting and to identify common

problems across networks

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Management Vision

• Top Down Service Approach – TV, Broadband & Telephony Services (Including supporting IT estate).

• Simplified single pane view of the network, systems and services – minimizes screen real estate requirements

• Common tools across as many technologies as possible making cross training easier for first line support

• Focus on Service Up time• Good record keeping from day 1 – current state and previous

states, start as we mean to go on • Providing a Quality NOC requires good People, good Processes

and good Tools.

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• 24x7 NOC Team– NOC First Line engineers (Generic skill sets)– NOC Support Engineers (Specialised in an area)– 3x NOC Shift Team Lead (first point of escalation night or day) to provide overlapping shift handover coverage

• Business Hours and Call out team– Senior NOC Support Engineers (Expert level in a technology or service)– NOC Manager (Second point of escalation and ultimately the owner of all NOC functions– Change & Configuration Manager – Responsible for tracking changes to configurations and inventory in the network.– Service Level Manager – benchmarking, measuring and reporting on performance of the process as well as the network and services.

In a start up phase some of these roles can be combined

• NOC Functions– Acts as Central Contact for all outages planned or unplanned – Change and Configuration Management/Incident and Problem Management– Follows customized support processes – Incident and Problem Management processes– Detects & records events - surveillance– Investigates & prioritizes incidents – Incident Management– Notifies & consults with customers/partners– Escalates & resolves incidents– Manages life cycle of trouble records – Jeopardy Management/SLA Management– Mediates issues with vendors and carrier– Manages Changes to the network – Change Management– Manages Configuration changes to the network – Configuration Management

NOC functions

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Support

First Line

Senior support

Suggested Organisation

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NOC Systems

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NOC Systems• There are many software vendors offering frameworks of tools for Management of

Networks. • There is a grey area around definition of OSS – this should be clearly defined at the outset

as well as ownership and accountability. The NOC toolset is network facing OSS, there is data used for Mediation, Billing and Activation which can be used to manage the network and services. This being the case it’s important a common SOA architecture is used to enable the simple exchange of open format data via SOAP and Web Services and other simple open interfaces.

• Tools currently under consideration for NOC deployment– Vendor EMS/NMS platforms– Nagios– Cacti

• There are several other lower cost providers of tools in this space that should be looked at, all provide a decent but not class leading level of functionality.

• Free or open source toolsets require less Capital investment but more Opex investment in support and customisation and don’t necessarily scale for a full Service provider model

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Data Types• SNMP traps• SNMP Polled OID data• Syslog events• IPDR performance data• TR069 Device data• Non SNMP Alarm data• Northbound EMS/NMS Feeds• Inventory Model• Trouble Ticket Data

There is a need for a Canonical Data Model for information sharing between all parts of the business

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Key strategic tool requirements• Flexibility: Ease of change, ability to intercept new

requirements in the future (i.e. New technology/Vendor/Service)

• Scalability: Can grow or be grown in advance of network growth or has a known limit which can be planned for.

• Cost containment – non-linear cost vs Network growth for future

• Lean architecture: Minimise number of tools, systems and suppliers to minimise support and training costs.

• Simplicity: Ease of use/support.