Protocols for Software Integration

In existence today are protocols and standards providing for the exchange of information
among network elements and associated software control systems (that is, network element
management software modules and network management software modules). Two such
protocols are used more than any others: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). Both are generally concerned
with supporting machine-to-machine communication among network elements, but their
approach is quite different, and CORBA represents a far more sophisticated and far-reaching
technology.
SNMP originated in the enterprise world and is designed to collect management information
from devices on the network. It presupposes a centralized network management software
system. SNMP uses a request-and-response process to obtain information from the participating
devices and consumes little bandwidth in transmitting such information, which makes it
robust. It will provide such information to the centralized control console as network topology,
traffic patterns, and diagnostics, and it is capable of disconnecting nodes as well as permitting
centralized management of said nodes. What it is not designed to do is directly control devices
in the network or to support automatic flow-through processes where one event triggers
another. An example of the latter is flow-through provisioning when a subscriber orders new
services, and subsequently the billing, provisioning, network management, network discovery,
and network element modules all automatically respond in a sequenced fashion.
SNMP is a well-proven protocol, and nothing is wrong with it, but its intended use is in
internal local area networks (LANs) where issues such as billing and SLAs are irrelevant. It is
simply not designed to support commercial service offerings. The majority of wireless broadband
products made today support SNMP, and that is as it should be, but such support should
not be considered a complete solution to the operator’s software OSS integration problems.
CORBA, the other major protocol for achieving network integration, reflects a revolution
in software development that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s, namely, the rise of
object-oriented programming. That revolution was entirely successful, and today its effects are absolutely pervasive not only in telecommunications but in countless other software
applications.
Object-oriented programming is basically a modular approach to creating applications
where standard tools are included with the data to be manipulated, and the combination
thereof is referred to as an object. Object technology can easily integrate many types of information,
and it allows different applications to communicate with one another readily. Objects
themselves can readily be imported and reused across applications, and programmers and
developers can assemble new applications out of predefined code sequences. Lengthy books
have been written on the subject of object-oriented programming, and their length has been
justified by the power of the concept and the way in which it has simplified and rationalized the
programming process. Given the huge number of Web-based applications developed in the
late 1990s, mostly through object-oriented techniques, one can say that object-oriented programming
arrived just in the nick of time. The Internet today would be a different and far less
interesting place had the revolution not occurred.
Insofar as network elements and associated OSS systems contain objects, and most of
them do today, CORBA provides a way for objects to communicate with other objects, which in
turn provides a degree of interoperability that permits flow-through procedures and a high
degree of network automation. For this reason, CORBA compliance is quite commonplace
though far from universal in current network elements.
In addition to SNMP and CORBA, a number of other protocols aimed at easing interoperability
in the service provider network are extant in the marketplace. These include Common
Management Information Protocol (CMIP), Common Management Information Service
(CSMIS), and a number of Java initiatives endorsed by the Java Community Process organization
shepherded by Sun Microsystems. The Java offerings consist of Java 2 Enterprise Edition
(J2EE), Operational Support System/Java (OSS/J), and New Generation OSS (NGOSS).
CMIP and CMIS are closely related, and, regrettably, neither has found much acceptance
among manufacturers. At this point they do not appear to represent the future. CMIP can to a
certain extent be regarded as an outgrowth, embellishment, and replacement for SNMP, but it
is a far more complex and powerful protocol, permitting the execution of various tasks as well
as the accumulation of information from network elements. But, because it is based on the
obsolescent Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model promoted by International Standardization
Organization (ISO), it holds increasingly little appeal for either OSS platform developers
or equipment designers.
Java-based systems, for whatever reasons, have not developed a large following either, and
it is safe to say that CORBA is as close to being a de facto standard for system integration within
public networks as any protocol in use today.