1 Introduction
With the rapid development of communication technology and the further expansion of the communication market, more and more devices with high complexity are running on the Internet, and a large number of new businesses are also applied, resulting in the increasing workload of operators to manage and maintain networks, the cost is getting higher and higher. In order to better monitor network operation, improve network maintenance efficiency, improve service quality, and reduce operation costs, operators are increasingly demanding for a unified network management platform.
At the same time, fierce competition has resulted in rapid market changes and product lifecycle shortening, which has increased the pressure for rapid market launch. In this environment, network management has become a competitive tool to reduce operating costs and improve the quality of network operation. With the continuous expansion and maturity of the Next Generation Network NGN technology, providing effective value-added services is the key to winning the market. Therefore, it is necessary to design a unified network management platform that includes business implementation.
As the core device of NGN, softswitch manages a variety of data products, such as signaling gateways, access gateways, relay gateways, Smart terminal devices, and AAA servers. Therefore, it is imperative to build a powerful, comprehensive, and robust and scalable unified management platform for Softswitch networks.
2J2EE Architecture Analysis
J2EE is an architecture that uses the Java 2 Enterprise platform to simplify the development, deployment, and Management of Enterprise Solutions and other complex problems. The foundation of J2EE technology is the standard version of the core Java 2 platform. J2EE not only consolidates many advantages in the standard version, such as the feature of "writing once and running anywhere", but also facilitates access to the jdbc api of the database, it also provides comprehensive support for EJBEnterprise JavaBeans, Java Servlets API, JSPJava Server Pages, and XML technologies. The ultimate goal is to become an architecture that can greatly shorten the time to market for enterprise developers.
The typical 4-layer structure 1 of J2EE is shown in.
3. Unified Network Management Platform System Architecture Analysis
For a complete unified softswitch network management platform, the following factors must be taken into account: availability, capacity, scalability, flexibility, manageability, performance, reliability, scalability, security, and testability.
Therefore, the unified network management platform must provide a highly distributed and scalable architecture to ensure that application developers can arrange their network element management systems and business systems in different ways. The system architecture 2 of the unified network management platform is shown without considering value-added services.
The J2EE-based unified network management platform can well adapt to the requirements of Softswitch networks and NGN, and implement a telecom-level unified network management system with a powerful cross-platform distributed client/server computing structure, it manages online devices with high quality and efficiency, and provides effective support for various services in NGN.
3.1 scalability of the platform
Scalability can be divided into two aspects: Performance expansion and cascade.
For performance, Java is recognized to be lower than C ++ in some performance indicators. Therefore, the J2EE platform may have potential risks in some modules with high performance requirements, therefore, if the performance is insufficient, you can use the C ++ component to replace some Java components. One method is J2EE + Corba, And the other method is to call local code, that is, the JNI method.
For cascade, the application cascade module can help the application find the target service objects, thus shielding the application from calling JNDI directly. The service to be searched for can be EJB, it can also be a JMS object, such as a connection factory or topic. After the application finds the required service through the cascade module, it can send the command to him to complete the operation. See figure 3.
3.2 platform compatibility
A unified network management platform should consider not only the various device types, but also the compatibility with the original system, as well as the platform operating environment and support environment.
Using the J2EE architecture, the adaptation modules of various devices can be used to solve the complicated problem of devices and ensure the universality and uniformity of the platform. For the original system, the existing resources can be fully utilized through multiple access methods in different locations on the platform. For the runtime environment and supporting environment diversity, the Java platform independence and the versatility of EJB are used, j2EE is one of the best solutions.
3.3 scalability of the platform
The J2EE distributed system can flexibly deploy various functional modules of the network management platform based on the specific server hardware configuration, Network Element scale, and business development requirements. While ensuring normal network management, effectively protect operators' investments.
3.4 practicability and fault tolerance of the platform
Based on the diversity of storage units and processing units, the J2EE distributed system has the potential to continue running in the case of system failures. When a server in the system crashes, other servers can take over from him to ensure that the service is not interrupted.
3.5 platform performance/Cost
The parallel architecture of the J2EE distributed system reduces the processing bottleneck and provides comprehensive performance improvement. That is, the large-scale distributed system provides better cost-effectiveness.
3.6 Implementation of additional services
The traditional strength of the J2EE system is to implement business functions. In the distributed platform, you can easily deploy business function modules to achieve parallel deployment and unified management with the network management function module. In addition, the distribution characteristics and hot deployment of ejbs allow you to control and manage business functions without affecting the operation of the original platform. With the support of JCA and JTS, you can easily connect to EIS resources such as ERP, large transaction processors, and databases.
4. Analysis of the subsystem of the Unified Network Management Platform
The basis of the system structure design is the TMN part of the Telecommunication Management Network in ITUT, including the function division of the internal modules of the system, the interface between functional blocks, and the interface design between the system and other systems.
4.1 division of functional modules
4.1.1 platform support function module
Recently, this separation operating system mainly provides a support system for applications to run. It mainly uses the J2EE architecture to support all other functions. This part should be independent from the development system and reusable. For example, you can develop e-commerce application systems and ERP application systems on this platform in the future. The functions provided mainly include communication management, scheduling control, database access, transaction management, naming management, file system, XML interface, clock synchronization, debugging and printing. This part of the functional modules and other functional modules must be related with many interfaces.
4.1.2 workstation function module
Applications located on the customer workstation provide the F and G interfaces specified by TMN to present the information to the user in a correct and consistent manner. Since all the application function modules are implemented on the server, the workstation must be able to correctly parse user instructions and the results returned by the server. in order to complete the above functions, a corresponding communication management mechanism should also be provided, manages sessions between users and servers. Provides interface F and internal interface MVI with public service function modules, and provides WEB, GUI, and CLI methods.
4.1.3 other functional modules
Other functional modules of the Platform include: public application function module, management application function module, management information function module, and network element intermediary function module.
These modules are planned and designed according to the specific requirements of various systems and network elements.
4.2 platform Interface
4.2.1 public support interface
Provides call interfaces for all other functional subsystems. All other functional subsystems interact with the operating system and database through this interface. This interface is designed to be independent of the operating system and specific framework technologies. High encapsulation, substitution, and transparency to the upper layer. Standardization is required to support the development of other non-network management systems in the future. It can be provided to secondary developers.
4.2.2 main View Interface
In the client module, this interface provides an entry for other network management systems to access the main view. This interface needs to collect topology information, simple alerts, and logon security information so that the main view can fully display the tree Chart display of multiple devices, the topology graph requires that the connection relationship between devices is maintained by the topology tree of the public service module ). If you can create, delete, and modify properties of subnets and network elements of each device in the master view, MVI port is also required. Interfaces can be provided to secondary developers to connect to the existing network management system, and various network management applications for secondary development based on the platform can be unified in the main view on the GUI. This allows network management applications to perform secondary development independently and provide a unified view on the GUI. It ensures flexibility and uniformity.
4.2.3F Interface
Here, the format rules of the F-port message are unified, and the F-port message stream adopts the xml format and requires an xml interpreter ).
4.2.4 other platform Interfaces
The Platform also provides functions such as public service interfaces, public application interfaces, and management information interfaces. These interfaces are standardized to ensure the interaction of internal information on the platform.
5. Business implementation of the Unified Network Management Platform
On the one hand, the unified network management platform can provide a multi-device Integrated Management Platform for the softswitch network to achieve unified data collection, integrated data analysis and processing, and a unified management interface. On the other hand, the platform integrates various service systems related to Softswitch networks, such as service activation, QoS, billing, and security management, and establishes a unified Operation Support System (OSS ).
The platform is designed to be divided by business functions. network services and services are used as network management objects and business-related devices are detected in real time, comprehensive and multi-angle detection of network service running conditions and service flow availability. This not only facilitates the deployment of the platform, but also provides a convenient data basis for operators to operate, analyze, and upgrade.
6. Uniform Network Management Platform deployment
The platform can be distributed to multiple processors. Supports distributed databases, Sun, IBM, Intel and HP hardware platforms, and the following operating systems: Solaris, AIX, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows NT, and HPUX.
The Platform supports the deployment scheme of the cascade Management System, which can manage large networks and multiple local EMS management networks, while the global EMS manages the entire network through local EMS. You can manage any local EMS on the global EMS user interface. Global and local EMS servers can be deployed on different hardware and operating systems, such as global EMS deployed on Solaris and local EMS deployed on Windows NT ). The communication bandwidth between the global and local EMS servers is more than 2 MB.
7 conclusion
Using J2EE technology, the current unified softswitch network management platform can be easily deployed in a distributed manner, which greatly improves the actual running performance of the platform and solves the bottleneck that has plagued the network management platform, in addition, through the unified management of EJB containers, synchronization problems on applications are easily realized. The hot deployment mechanism can be used to modify and expand the software while running, effectively solving the Software Version Upgrade problem, overcome the adverse effects of software re-compilation and startup after software modification and upgrade on traditional platforms.
In short, the starting point of the current unified network management platform is far higher than the traditional platform, eliminating the Legacy problems and paving the way for rapid development and business application in the future.
As the core of the NGN softswitch network, its importance is self-evident. A practical and powerful unified Softswitch Network Management Platform can provide reliable guarantee for large-scale commercial development of Softswitch networks in the future, and also provide a good support platform for operations based on SoftSwitch, it creates a basic win-win situation for developers and operators.
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Author: Fan Chang, Xu zongze School of information science and technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China) from: modern electronic technology
