The telecommunications industry is changing rapidly. Voice-oriented services have given way to data and multimedia, low-speed to high-speed networks, closed architecture to open standards, closed access to customer access, and equipment-specific to integrated systems. TMN is the telecommunications industry framework that supports the management of these changing environments.
IBM provides a family of TMN standards-compliant products:
The TMN product family brings benefits to your business by increasing programmer productivity in the generation of applications and offering significant reductions in the effort and time required to test them. With the TMN product family, you'll see less need for maintaining your applications. And, with TMN, you no longer need to depend on proprietary protocols and architectures. Instead, you will have migrated to open, standards-based management systems.
With IBM's TMN product family, you can protect your investment in today's technology, while building for tomorrow.
The TMN Support Facility management platform provides a communication infrastructure, an agent/manager framework, and a suite of generic applications for both open systems interconnection/common management information protocols (OSI/CMIP) and internet Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). The TMN Support Facility is based on proven IBM technologies, products, and network management expertise.
The TMN Support Facility capitalizes on and extends the strengths of Netview for AIX to provide:
More specifically, IBM TMN Support Facility provides OSI/CMIP, SNMP, and proprietary protocol support for managing TMN-compliant and legacy equipment in the telecommunications network infrastructure. The TMN Support Facility operates in an X.700-based, object-oriented agent/manager execution environment that can be readily aligned to the needs of operations systems in the networking industry. It offers a robust communication infrastructure giving customers a wide variety of choices for OSI/CMIP communication. The communication infrastructure offers OSI upper layers, running over X.25 or ISDN or TCP/IP data transport. It supports Connectionless Network Protocol CLNP for use in LAN (Ethernet/token ring) environments. For special needs, you can integrate your preferred OSI stack if it supports an XTI or TL1 interface.
With the TMN Support Facility, you have the advantages of object-oriented programming features like object dynamic, run-time access to class data (metadata) derived from the Guidelines for Definition of Managed Objects/Abstract Syntax Notation.1 (GDMO/ASN.1) definitions. You also have the ability to create new object classes that inherit characteristics like persistent object storage, multithreading, and multiple inheritance from superior object classes.
The TMN Support Facility client/server model supports multiple concurrent workstations. The TMN Support Facility also offers a set of plug-and-play generic applications that give you the basic management capabilities of your network elements. (These generic applications are also available as services for custom applications.) The TMN Support Facility offers a snappable stack that supports a TL1 interface to the OSSC (retix) stack. The NetView TMN Support Facility provides a TMN network management environment that moves the industry from today's vendor-proprietary world to an OSI/CMIP-based future.
The NetView TMN Support Facility has five generic applications that provide basic functions or platform services for customized applications.
The topology application provides a facility to graphically display the managed elements and their connectivity to the operator or the management platform. It provides facilities to support user-defined icons, background maps, dynamic discovery of network topology, an integration with fault, configuration, and performance applications. The topological view of the network serves as an integration point for you, allowing you to act (using the configuration application, for example) on the object displayed. The topology application constantly monitors the objects contained in the agents so that the information about them is updated when objects are created or deleted, or when their status changes. The topology application supports OmniPoint, M.3100, and also a topology integration point API to permit custom topology applications.
The fault application provides a CMIP control desk facility to monitor and display fault events forwarded by the agents that form the telecommunications network. The fault application includes provisions to control agent event filtering (create event forwarding discriminators) and collection of related events for operator intervention. The fault application is integrated with all of the generic applications running on the management platform for enhanced usability.
The performance application lets you monitor variables (attributes) of managed objects in CMIP agents and display these variables graphically. You can also define the way the values are collected and how and when to display them. Application developers are supported through an application programming interface (API) for data collection and objects for graphical presentation. The presentation can be in the form of line graphs, histograms, pie charts, and tables.
As a generic application, configuration application is geared toward end users who intend to manage CMIP-based networks and agent developers who are testing their agents. Configuration application is also useful for application developers who want access to the data stored in the agent's CMIP management information base (MIB).
Configuration application exports CMIP operations through an OSF/Motif user interface, presents the object instances located in a CMIP agent in a graphical or nongraphical (list) mode, and offers you facilities to automate simple management procedures through a CMIP command-line interpreter. For agent developers, the configuration application, with the agent generator of the TMN Workbench, provides an iterative development environment.
This application manages logs maintained by agents. In the TMN and OSI/X.700 environment, agents allocate resources to store such information. The log manager application lets you create, configure, and delete logs in an agent, and retrieve, view, and delete log records stored in an agent, through a graphical user interface (GUI) in the management platform.
TMN WorkBench for AIX is a set of AIX-based tools that simplifies the development of object models and the element, network, and service management applications using the OSI agent/manager model.
Developers use TMN WorkBench to rapidly develop applications to open standards. More importantly, TMN WorkBench has advanced technology to automatically generate agent implementations and a comprehensive set of run-time debug tools. IBM's TMN WorkBench is TMN standards-compliant and includes a set of object-oriented development tools, comprising the most complete and technically advanced offering in the industry.
TMN WorkBench simplifies the process of developing OSI management and agent applications. It provides a GDMO/ASN.1 environment for defining and controlling managed object classes and instances. TMN WorkBench includes the following tools for developing the object model and management agent applications:
Developing OSI applications can be tedious and error-prone. A typical GDMO document describing managed object classes contains lists of classes, packages, and all their subcomponents, each identified by registered object identifiers. These definitions are complex and lengthy.
If you want to write a management application, you must translate the object definitions into programming language data structures_a time-consuming job. TMN WorkBench, however, eliminates much of the routine work involved in generating code for data structures.
TMN WorkBench provides:
TMN WorkBench also provides a cookbook-type guide with easy-to-follow examples of how to use each tool.
With TMN WorkBench, you get accurate compilation of GDMO, ASN.1, and system management interface (SMI) notations for the specification of managed objects. You have all the tools and APIs necessary to simplify enhancements. TMN WorkBench offers the ability to create new object classes that inherit the characteristics of superior classes and gives you a graphic display of the complete class hierarchy. An automatic code generation feature supports XOM/XMP communication.
The Abstract Data Services API application can store, delete, or retrieve persistent X/Open OSI-Abstract-Data Manipulation (XOM) objects. The XOM/XMP trace/browser is a trace/debug tool that decodes and displays XOM/XMP communication flows to an easy-to-read human interface.
Agent generator supports the agent/manager framework, supports X.700 agent and manager object-oriented execution environment, and offers automatic generation of OSI agent implementations.
For agent generation, the managed object/agent composer provides a set of callback routines for you to use to implement associated behaviors to object classes and their attributes. The set of object classes and the callback interfaces are generated in C++.
An object interface composer automatically generates C++ classes or managed objects, increasing the efficiency of the developers. OOI network management application dramatically simplifies the development of management applications by hiding the XMP API below C++ objects. Full embedding of managed objects into C++ classes allow for a strong type-checking at compile time, reducing the amount of debugging usually necessary for XOM/XMP-based applications. And the OOI run-time system provides C++ classes that allow convenient access to the CMIS.
TMN WorkBench, coupled with IBM's TMN Support Facility product, provides robust communication infrastructure with a set of generic CMIP applications including topology, fault, performance, configuration, and log control. These GDMO model-independent applications take full advantage of the TMN WorkBench technology.
Be prepared for tomorrow's TMN-based future. Bring TMN Support Facility technology and the powerful application development tools of TMN WorkBench into your operation.
TMN Support Facility required software:
AIX Version 3 Release 2.5, Motif 1.2, Windows 11 R5, CSet++ Compiler 2.1.1, or greater
Optional software:
Ingres 6.4 or ORACLE 7.0, or greater
TMN WorkBench required software:
AIX Version 3 Release 2.5, Motif 1.2, Windows X11 R5, and Cset++ Compiler 2.1.1, or greater
Optional software:
Ingres 6.4, ORACLE 7.0, or greater, or AIX Shared Library Support
© Copyright 1995 International Business Machines Corporation. All rights reserved.
February 1995.
IBM, NetView, and AIX are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation.
Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
XTI is a trademark of X/Open Company Limited, OSF/Motif and Motif are trademarks of Open Software Foundation, Incorporated; C++ is a trademark of American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Incorporated; and ORACLE is a trademark of Oracle Corporation.
IBM does not determine whether every mark used by another is considered a trademark. The absence of a trademark identifier is not a representation that no third party claims trademark rights in a particular mark.
References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available outside the United States.