Service assurance for converged networks
Richard T. Banke, Thomas K. Lybarger, Michael L. Patton · Bell Labs Technical Journal · 2002
“There's gold in them thar hills!” When that cry went up in 1849, people gave up their livelihoods and went charging ahead to mine that gold. The gold of the late twentieth century was telecommunications services. The “prospectors” who succeeded struck a balance between getting there first and getting there with the right tools that were able to grow as their operations grew. Telecommunications service providers must bring the right set of tools to assure their customers of a certain quality of service (QoS). Those tools include efficient service assurance software that can support effective fault and performance management, as well as supporting service-level agreement (SLA) management for converged networks that support voice, data, and many other new services over existing new and converged network infrastructures. This article will discuss the new technologies and services and describe strategies for providing service assurance.