New design schemes for lightweight TMN mediation device/Q3 adapter

This paper describes new design schemes for a telecommunication management network (TMN) agent for man machine language (MML)-managed network elements (NE), especially for ATM networks. Most of the currently developed ATM switches have simple MML interfaces for local operator crafts. This means that most operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) functions reside within the NE itself, and designing a TMN agent as a proxy is considered to be most appropriate in that more intelligent event correlation and filtering can be done in the NE itself. In TMN environment, proxy-based management expects an agent to have a functionality of a Q adaptation function (QAF), rather than a network element function (NEF) itself. In contrast with NEF, QAF can be simplified by focusing on the message conversion, namely adaptation and mediation, between standard CMIP messages and proprietary MML messages or any kind of management messages. Based on this observed fact, this paper proposes several design schemes for a Q3 agent and its companion gateway function, so that a Q3 agent, as a proxy, can rather be lightweight and mediation-insensitive. The design schemes proposed in this paper are listed in the following: designing management protocol-insensitive schema for an NE-embedded database (DB), mapping of a management information base (MIB)/management instances tree (MIT) accesses to DB queries and making direct use of DB queries, minimizing the retained information on MIT/MIB, and using GDMO/ASN.1-based MML mediation capabilities with various message adaptation capabilities