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Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options Pronto OSS – Options for Network Management Integration Various network management options are available in the Pronto OSS for integration into a carrier’s existing management processes. These options are described in detail in this document and they include: - SNMP based management of the Pronto Hotspot Service Controller (PHC) and Pronto Hotzone Service Gateway (PHG) networks. This includes SNMP proxys from the OSS, SNMP MIBs on the PHC/PHG, using SNMP to manage other elements at the location, etc. - XML-based APIs through Pronto’s Generic API module (GAPI). This allows for the service provider to develop custom applications for various purposes. In this document an Alarm Management and a Network Viewer application is described. - Plug-ins and toolkits available from Pronto Networks for integration into an existing HP Openview installation. Pronto’s Hotspot Networking System is a solution suite for wireless network management that handles billing, management and security. The Pronto OSS provides management solutions that are scalable, innovative, and reduces a service provider’s operational and capital expenditures. In addition, the Pronto OSS is designed to easily integrate into a service provider’s existing NMS infrastructure. This document is intended for network management and IT planners in a service provider’s organization that are investigating integration options for merging new services and networks into their existing operations processes. This paper is based on R3.0 of the Pronto OSS. 1. Network Management features of the Pronto OSS The Pronto OSS is a wireless access infrastructure solution that provides service control and service management for broadband WLANs. It consists of two major components – the Pronto Operations Support System (OSS) and an access network consisting of PHC and PHGs. The Pronto OSS is the back-office operations support and billing systems software that provides complete AAA, billing, credit card authorization, roaming bulk settlement and network monitoring functionalities. PHCs and PHGs are customer site gateways to which Access Points (AP) are connected. The OSS provides solutions for the management of wireless networks. These solutions cater to various demanding practical scenarios. A typical wireless network has a user station / laptop that would require Internet connectivity. A WiFi access point (AP) provides wireless connectivity to the station. There can be many APs in a given location connected to the router through a switch. The Gateway/ router basically provides WAN connectivity. Typically, in a Pronto Managed Wireless Network (a Hotspot), the PHC is the Gateway/ router. In case of small enterprise networks, PHC doubles up for an AP i.e. it will be Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 1 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options both an AP and a Gateway/ router. When there are many APs, the APs are connected to PHC through a switch at a typical large public hotspot location like an airport or shopping mall, etc. The Pronto Networks Hotspot OSS features powerful configuration, fault and performance management capabilities that enable NOC personnel to configure and monitor the health of the Hotspot controllers, and monitor pure access points attached to Hotspot Controllers on a real time basis. Capabilities to create greeting pages and log files for Hotspot Controller initialization and web service requests have been included. With these enhanced network management features, Pronto can now improve hotspot operators’ service uptime and reduce operational costs. The Pronto OSS Management Features Heartbeat - Every Hotspot Controller in the network sends heartbeats to the Hotspot OSS Server. This information is used to monitor its health, status and user connections. Different filters are provided to easily locate and provide quick relief measures in case of a controller outage. Also, integrated into this module, is the ability to locate the controllers deployed in different parts of the world and view their sessions. This heartbeat mechanism allows the Pronto OSS to manage private networks that may reside behind firewall or Network Access Translation routers, etc. The heartbeat mechanism thus provides visibility to networks that heretofore would require configuration changes in the location devices, assignment of public (or static) IP addresses, or would not be visible at the NOC. The Pronto OSS can now serve as a proxy to external management systems. The Pronto OSS provides such proxy capabilities that include SNMP proxies, HPOV plug-ins, and other XML-based APIs. Alert Management – The OSS provides an enhanced ability to manage alerts and monitor the health of the production network. All alerts arising out of the various subsystems are centrally managed. Alerts can be filtered by type as well as severity level. Multiple alert groups can be configured and rules can be defined in the system to manage and dispatch alert messages received by the OSS. Pure Access Point Management and Monitoring - PHCs have the ability to monitor the access points (APs) connected to their subtending Ethernet interfaces. The OSS additionally captures the Mapped IP Address for these devices. The administrator can also enable or disable monitoring for a given AP. In conjunction with the Alert Management system, email alerts can be dispatched to recipient groups, when a dumb AP goes down or does not respond to requests from the PHC. Remote Management (Dashboard) – The Pronto OSS “Controller Monitor” screen highlights (color codes) when specific event traps or system exceptions are traced. A valuable feature addition to the Network Management module is the Remote Web Console, whereby third party access points and gateways can be remotely configured and managed. With this feature the unknown dumb AP that is on a private network behind the PHC can be remotely configured. Configuration information of access points like IP Address, MAC address and the url of access point setup interface are stored and managed from the OSS repository. Rest of Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 2 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options the information pertaining to the access point configuration like SSID is obtained from the access point’s repository itself. A network operator wanting to set-up a new wireless network using Pronto’s OSS would have various needs based on their existing infrastructure. The Pronto OSS provides various alternatives to address the needs of these network operators. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 3 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options 2. SNMP based management options For a new wireless network operator, OSS provides wireless network management with SNMP giving a feature rich NMS functionality through OSS. In a Pronto OSS, Network management is fully based on the basic SNMP architecture and functionality. The Client (NMS in Pronto OSS) ‘reads from’ and ‘writes’ selected information on a Server (NE – Can be any SNMP enabled wireless device in the hotspot i.e. PHCs, APs etc). Figure 1: OSS solution to Wireless network management Pronto OSS supports simple SNMP communication primitives: three types of requests (GET, GETNEXT, and SET) and one unsolicited information transmission (TRAP). To get information from any NE, Pronto OSS will send a ‘GetRequest’ or ‘GetNextRequest’ to the agent, and the requested information or an error message will be sent back in a ‘Response’. If OSS wants to change information on an agent, a ‘SetRequest’ will be sent with a corresponding response to confirm or report an error. The unsolicited message is called a ‘trap’. This message is usually sent by NE devices on start-up, on status change or in response to abnormal (error) conditions. Advantages of using Pronto’s NMS in this mechanism are: 1. The network operator can buy APs from any manufacturer thus providing flexibility. 2. The network can scale easily without any onsite configuration requirements. Let us consider a situation where the network operator realizes that the usage at a particular hotspot is relatively high and wishes to expand geographically. All that the network operator needs to do is to purchase new APs, plug them on to his network and inform the OSS about the MAC addresses of the APs. The network operator does not require any trained technically qualified people to execute this job. Moreover the operator can manage the network using Pronto’s OSS. This OSS feature relieves the operator of deployment and scaling problems that are typically bottlenecks experienced using many third party NMSs. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 4 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options 3. Using Pronto’s OSS, a user gets to manage NEs that belong to a private LAN Let us consider a network operator who already owns a wired network that is being managed by a third party NMS like HP Open View, and desires to expand to wireless networks using Pronto’s OSS – see Figure 2. Figure 2: Total OSS solution to Wired and new Wireless network management using any NMS The requirements of such a network operators can be varied. Some of them are cited below: Ability to manage the new wireless network using a third party NMS that is already being used to manage the existing wired network. To accommodate this requirement, OSS provides a plug-in for HP OpenView (or any other NMS), which gives the network manager, ability to monitor the NEs in the wireless network. In the management environment, OSS captures the wireless network topology of the entire network and exports the topology to the third party NMS, thus integrating the management of wireless networks through third party NMS. A network operator can manage the new wireless network (NEs behind the PHC) through any third party NMS. This feature enables the network operator to continue using his existing NMS to manage the new Wireless Network, even though it may be part of a mixed private/public network. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 5 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options Figure 3: OSS as a SNMP proxy for NMS To facilitate this feature, the Pronto OSS acts as a SNMP proxy agent as depicted in Figure 3. Architecturally, it works as follows: A SNMP request for AP/ PHC is initiated by the third party NMS and is proxied to OSS that runs the SNMP proxy agent. The proxy agent in turn encapsulates the SNMP message in a SOAP-XML format and sends it to the PHC. The PHC extracts the SNMP message encapsulated inside it. The SNMP request is then sent to the AP behind the PHC. The same mechanism is followed for the SNMP Response from the AP to the NMS in the reverse order. Suppose a third party NMS wants to manage a NE behind a private LAN (i.e. behind the PHC) without going though the proxy agent. Figure 4: SNMP management using ALG aware PHC This is possible only if the NE is directly reachable implying that the NE should have a public static IP. But in typical WLAN scenarios, the NE belongs to a private LAN (i.e. behind a PHC) as shown in Figure 4. To facilitate the management of NEs belonging to a private LAN, Pronto Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 6 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options provides a SNMP ALG (SNMP Application Level Gateway) feature in the PHC through which it is possible to achieve Static NAT in the PHC. SNMP messages meant to/from the NE (in a private LAN) now contains the IP of the NE. The IP address is replaced with an IP that makes sense to the receiver, the replacement function being performed by the SNMP-ALG aware PHC. In short, using Pronto OSS NMS, Network operator/ Manager experiences a flexible and feature rich environment, like: Use any third party AP Scale the network on the fly Remote SNMP management of NEs of a private LAN Continue to use their existing NMS and yet monitor the new Wireless Network under various requirements: Use their existing NMS to monitor the new Wireless Network using a proxy agent Use their existing NMS to monitor the new Wireless Network without a proxy agent Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 7 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options 4. Monitoring Options using Pronto’s Generic Application Programming Interface (GAPI) Pronto OSS features an XML based API that allows for the development of custom applications for various data access and alert related features. This section provides a description of a Network Monitoring Application, developed and offered by Pronto Networks, that features complete network monitoring of the PHC/PHG and all the APs connected at the location. As we illustrate, this application includes an integrated AP monitoring function. Note that in the Pronto OSS solution, the APs can be from various hardware manufacturers. Architecture of the GAPI Application: GAPI is a mechanism developed as a part of the Pronto OSS to deliver the critical customer related information in any possible combination to any external application. GAPI is capable of 1. Recognizing an event. 2. Notify the external application of the event occurrence, and 3. Deliver information pertaining to this event to the external application. GAPI is an easy to use mechanism that delivers the notifications of all event types to any external application and then accepts a query for delivering any data pertaining to that event, subject to security restrictions. GAPI is a Java/Perl servlet with support for SOAP/XML data. Figure 5 shows the basic architecture of the GAPI application. ENS Figure 5 - GAPI Architecture Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 8 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options The GAPI Mechanism consists of an Event Notification Service and an Event Trigger. Event Notification Service (ENS) Event Notification Service (ENS) brokers' events between the Event Trigger and the Event Receiver. The ENS maintains all information about which subscribers are interested in which events, so that publishers and subscribers need not be aware of each other. Moreover, anyone can publish or subscribe to events using the well-defined generic interface without having to implement any major changes in the logic. Event Trigger This mechanism triggers or produces events and notifies the Event Receiver of the event occurrence. In case it receives a query about this event for an external application from the Event Receiver, it results in a canonical push of data from the GAPI Interface to the Event Receiver and finally to the passive external application. For additional details of the capabilities of the GAPI interface, please refer to additional documentation and product information briefs available from Pronto Networks. An Integrated Network Monitoring Application This is an XML based API application designed for the purpose of monitoring a wireless Hotspot Network. The application provides a customizable GUI based view of the network in the form of various fields for various different parameters associated with the WISP and the network elements to be monitored. Fig 6 shows the GUI based view of the application. The application allows login access to the network personnel at the following levels for monitoring purposes: 1. NOC level 2. WISP level 3. Location level Following are the key features of the Integrated Network Monitoring Application: 1. The application features the ability to monitor the PHCs and APs in a Pronto OSS. Status of each PHC can be displayed using different color codes. For example, if the PHC status is displayed as a. Red – It indicates that PHC is down. b. Green - It indicates that PHC is up. c. Orange - It indicates that PHC is partially down, i.e. one or more of the APs connected to the PHC may be down. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 9 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options Figure 6: Integrated Network Monitoring Application – GUI view 2. The application allows the NOC personnel to monitor any specific network element by performing a search for that particular network element. This search can be based on the following parameters: a. All Exact Words – This allows to search for any specific network element/specific parameter associated with a specific network element by keying in the exact string, as it needs to be searched. b. All Any Word - This allows to search for any specific network element/specific parameter associated with a specific network element by keying in the any of the words in the exact string, as it needs to be searched. c. Any particular field name – This would allow the network statistics to be displayed according based on a particular field value. For example, network statistics can be displayed based on a particular WISP ID, Location ID, or NAS ID etc. 3. Automatic updation of data: The application allows an automatic refresh of the data in various fields displayed on specified configurable intervals. 4. Movable Windows: The GUI based view of the application is fully customizable. It allows the various windows in the application view to be movable according to user’s choice. For example, Figure 7 and 8 display 2 different views of the same monitoring data in the application windows. The application also allows the ability to view specific details with the ability to zoom in based on WISP, location, PHC status etc. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 10 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options Figure 7: GUI View 1 Figure8: GUI View 2 after moving the windows from View 1 5. AP List, ACL, VLAN, L3 details if present: The application presents the status of various connected Access points, which may be any third party APs. A list of any connected APs can be viewed by clicking on the AP List tab. Similarly, the status of ACLs, VLANs or L3 features can be viewed by clicking on their respective tabs if there are any configured in the network. Figure 9 displays a list of connected APs from different vendors. Figure 9: AP List View In Pronto’s existing deployments, the following WiFi access points, Wireless Mesh Routers, and other Wireless elements have been used. In all these cases, these elements are connected the LAN interface of the PHC or PHG at the location. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, just a current snapshot of Pronto’s deployments, and these APs are included in this Network Monitoring Application presented in this section. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 11 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options - Netgear WG302, ME102, ME103 D-Link DWL-1000AP+, DWL-7200 Linksys WAP54G Proxim AP-4000, AP-2000, AP-600, AP-700 3Com 7250 AP Cisco Aironet 350 Cisco 1200 Cisco 1231 YDI – Ether-Ant Type III and AP Plus devices Tropos – External 5110 and Internal 3110 Vivato – VA2200 AP/Bridge Engenius – AP NL-3054CB3 Plus Deluxe, NL-2611 CB3+ Valuepoint SuperAP500 IA18 The Network Monitoring application provides an integrated view of the entire network, abstracting the hardware specific configuration details from the NOC operator, reducing operating expenditures. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 12 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options 5. HP Openview Plug-ins to integrate with existing HP Openview installations In order to provide the facility of viewing the graphical representation of the wireless network topology in any hotspot and various levels of hierarchy in it, Pronto’s OSS provides the ability of its integration with any third party NMS. For example Pronto’s OSS supports the NMS Plug-in for HP Openview NNM 6.x to monitor the Pronto Hotspot Controllers and the third party access points behind it. The main objective of this application is to display the entire logical topology of the OSS operation as a hierarchy, by displaying the status of the Pronto Hotspot Controllers and the third party Access Points using the OpenView color codes. The NOC personnel, who are monitoring this network environment, can gather information on the status of each node in the environment from this topological view. It is also alert to any changes in the status of a node in the network such as a controller or access point failure. This helps the NOC personnel to zoom in on the faulty device and perform diagnostic operations. The NMS plug-in can also manage all SNMP supporting devices on the network. Hence, all servers, switches and routers on the network that support SNMP and have IP reachability can now be managed from the OSS. The following are the feature highlights of the NMS Plug-in application: One can now view Hotspot Controllers and Access Points and their hierarchy from the HP OpenView GUI. The status of the Hotspot Controller and the Access point is displayed in the HP OpenView GUI using color codes. The status of the Hotspot Controller and/or Access Points is propagated along the hierarchy and displayed to the NOC personnel with a change in the color of the WISP, Franchise, and Location symbols. Parameters associated with the Hotspot Controller and Access Point can be viewed be right clicking on any displayed symbol and choosing Object Properties. Topologyies of any number of 'OSS' can thus be maintained in the HP OpenView Database. NMS Plug-ins provides access to any OSS and the ability to update/view the topology on return to a particular OSS. It provides built-in user-authentication mechanism using windows registry. It is designed for service providers requiring a geographical view of the complete wireless hotspot network traversing the complete hierarchy enabling it to monitor the status of devices at each level of the network. Pronto offers this functionality through the NMS plug-in as mentioned above. Considering the following as the network hierarchy, we present examples of region-wise views that can be created for the network operator. WISP LEVEL -> LOCATION LEVEL -> CITY LEVEL -> PHC LEVEL -> AP LEVEL Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 13 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options WISP Level View This is a snapshot from the HP Openview installation that is now displaying a WISP level view of the network. In a wireless Hotspot Network, this would represent a central NOC level view from where the NOC personnel can monitor the status of the network at each city (region) level. Different color codes would represent the status of network at City level. For example, if a particular city’s symbol displays as red, it indicates that the particular city’s network has a fault in some particular location of the city, which can be located by clicking on that particular city’s symbol. City Level & Location Level View This snapshot from the HP Openview displays the City (region) and Location level views of the network. In a wireless Hotspot Network, this would represent a city/location level view from where the NOC personnel can monitor the status of the network at each location of the city where the hotspots are installed. Different color codes would represent the status of network at location Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 14 Pronto OSS – Network Management Integration Options level. For example, if a particular location’s symbol displays as red, it indicates that the particular location’s network has a fault in some particular PHC of that location, which can be located by clicking on that particular location’s symbol. PHC and AP Level View This snapshot from the HP Openview displays the PHC level view of the network in the operator’s wireless Hotspot Network, from where the NOC personnel can monitor the status of the network at each PHC in that particular location. Different color codes would represent the status of network at PHC level. For example, if a particular PHC’s symbol displays as red, it indicates that either the particular PHC or one of the Access Points connected to that PHC is down which can be located by clicking on that particular PHC’s symbol. Pronto OSS R3.0 July 2005 Page 15