Quality of Service Management in IBC: an OSI Management Based Prototype

As the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) standard emerges, it becomes clear that Integrated Broadband Communications (IBC) management functions will make use of OSI management models and protocols. Service management functions will undoubtfully be of the most important ones in maintaining the negotiated Quality of Service (QoS) to service (and thus IBC) users. This paper presents the architecture of a QoS management prototype based entirely on the OSI management model, as being developed within the RACE NEMESYS project. The modelling of services as managed objects at the different layers of the TMN hierarchy is presented. Intelligence is built into the service managed object classes, encapsulating most of the awareness and implementation functions of the NETMAN ADI model, while decision functions are left to the service management applications. In the absence of a real IBC environment, network and service functions are simulated but the actual QoS management functions are based on real OSI management services.