Using distributed object technologies in telecommunications network management

The Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) has been developed as the framework to support administrations in managing telecommunications networks. It suggests the use of OSI Systems Management (OSI-SM) as the technology for management information exchanges. Distributed object technologies, such as the Common Object Request Broker architecture (CORBA), address the use of software application program interfaces (APIs) in addition to interoperable protocols. Their use in TMN has been the subject of intensive research in previous years, with most approaches focusing on interoperability aspects with OSI-SM. We examine the issues behind using distributed object technologies in TMN via a native fashion, with network elements supporting distributed objects directly, e.g., a "CORBA to the switch" approach. The proposed solution tries to maintain the full OSI-SM expressive power in a way that other solutions have not attempted before. Performance and scalability issues are considered, while the approach has been validated through implementation.