THE WEB-BASED SLA MONITORING AND REPORTING

(WSMR) SYSTEM

Eunjin Ko, Junwoo Lee*, Gilhaeng Lee, Youngsun Kim

SLA Team, ETRI, 161 Gajeong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-350 Korea

Keywords: Service Level Management, Service Level Agreement, SOAP, COM/CORBA.

Abstract: To provide high-level quality of network service and prevent contract dissension, a Service Level Agree-

ment (SLA) is an essential key factor in telecommunication industry. While most network service providers

normally offer an SLA communicating with legacy monitoring or reporting systems, it is needed to suggest

new architecture of an SLA system for accommodating legacy network management systems without

considering operating environment of each system. To guarantee level of network service, it is important to

gather raw data from legacy systems or other Operating Support Systems and exactly manage it in time. In

this paper, we suggest architecture of an integrated SLA system that is operated on the web-based

communicating technology with legacy systems, i.e. Web-based Service Level Agreement Monitoring and

Reporting (WSMR) system. The proposed architecture offers the way to gather raw data and process it

using web-based communicating technology.

1 INTRODUCTION

As growing of Information Technology (IT)

industry, Internet Protocol (IP) is a de facto

telecommunication technology instead of

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or Frame

Relay (FR). IP is designed to transfer data from one

site to others without complicated technologies and

the simplicity of IP has explored the size of IT

business. While Quality of Service (QoS) is

considered as a minor factor to communicate in the

early of network era, there is a requirement of

accurate quality of network service depending on the

business rules from both Network Service Providers

(NSP) and customers.

Among these efforts to improve network service

quality, the concept of Service Level Management

(SLM) is emerged. SLM is the disciplined, proactive

methodology and procedures used to ensure that

adequate levels of service are delivered to all (IT)

users in accordance with business priorities and at

acceptable cost. And the instrument for enforcing

SLM is Service Level Agreement (SLA) (Rick

Sturm 2000).

An SLA emerged in the early 1990s as a way for

Information Technology (IT) departments and

service providers within private (usually, corporate)

computer networking environments to measure and

manage the QoS which they were delivering to their

internal customers. Service level agreements are the

contractual component of QoS and are usually

implemented as part of a larger service level

management (SLM) initiative (John J. Lee 2002).

An SLA is a formal negotiated agreement

between two parties. It is a contract that exists

between the Service Provider (SP) and the

Customer(TM Forum, 2001). In the view of NSPs, a

SLA let them have a chance to control and manage

their whole network resource more precisely. There

are five phases used to analyze SLA management;

Product/Service Development, Negotiation and

Sales, Implementation, Execution and Assessment as

Product/Se

vice

vel

egotiati

n a

Sales

mentation

uti

Assessm

Develop

Templates and

Parametric

Boundaries

Negotiate

Individual

Contracts

Take

Line/Service

Orders and

Provision

Monitor,

Surveillance,

Maintain, Bill

Reassess

Figure 1: Service and associated SLA life cycle

293

Ko E., Lee J., Lee G. and Kim Y. (2005).

THE WEB-BASED SLA MONITORING AND REPORTING (WSMR) SYSTEM.

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on e-Business and Telecommunication Networks, pages 293-297

DOI: 10.5220/0001413902930297

 SciTePress

shown in Figure 1. When developing an SLA,

consideration must be given to the life cycle as it

may affect SLA requirements(TM Forum, 2001).

2 RELATED WORKS

To Implement and execute a SLA, there are a lot of

attempts to propose a framework for constructing

and managing quality-of-service (QoS)-centered

service level agreement (SLA) between service

providers and their customers. In these attempts,

SLA is provided through the off-line designing steps

and real-time SLA management steps which are

good solutions to provide real-time SLA in multi-

service packet networks (Eric Bouillet, 2002).

However, there is also needed to gather information

from other legacy systems to provide several SLA.

To communicate with legacy systems for

collecting information, there are some of trial efforts

to use legacy monitoring or reporting systems for

SLA monitoring and reporting. One of these is an

integrated Customer Network Management (CNM)

architecture. This architecture provides SLA with

extending legacy CNM concept. In this architecture,

all functional modules are designed and

implemented as a CORBA object and it adapts

COM/CORBA communicating mechanism (E.C.

Kim, 2000). While COM/CORBA communication

provides the way to access objects, it is easier to

transfer XML via Simple Object Access Protocol

(SOAP).

Recently, as growing web service technologies,

XML web services architecture is recommended and

used when there is a need to communicate with each

other. One of the primary advantages of the XML

Web services architecture is that it allows

applications written in different languages on

different platforms to communicate with each other

in a standards-based way (Roger Wolter, 2001).

Also, all of network services do not have a common

network specification and many research groups or

telecommunication companies have tried to

categorize and classify the SLA metrics to provide

adaptable SLA to network service providers and

their customers (Nathan J Muller, 1999).

In this paper, we suggest the web-based SLA

system, i.e. WSMR system, depending on the XML

Web services architecture. This paper is written in

the following steps. In section 3, we suggest

architecture of WSMR system and explain the

components of WSMR system. It shows the result of

experimental test of WSMR in section 4. In section

5, we mention about the conclusions and present the

further works.

3 WEB-BASED SLA MONITOR-

ING AND REPORTING (WSMR)

SYSTEM

To support an SLA, it is important to categorize all

of contract elements because of managing and

controlling easily. There are normally three

categories in the SLA.

The first SLA category is Open Metrics. Open

Metrics is related with a process that checks whether

NSP provides network service in time or not. If there

is a delay of open service, SLA system has to

monitor the open process, verify the violation of

open metrics and notify NSP and customers of the

violation.

The Second is Trouble Metrics. Trouble Metrics

is related with a process which monitors how long

NSP spends a time to recover network trouble and

how many times it has been occurred during

charging period.

The third is Performance Metrics. Performance

Metrics is the important metrics category in the view

of IT business. Performance Metrics is related with

QoS of network and there are many testing methods

in various network services.

In the case of world leading IT companies, some

of them present several performance metrics that are

network latency, packet delivery, network

availability and so on (MCI).

The WSMR system has been designed and

developed to provide and manage a contract between

network service providers and their customers based

on the web-based XML technology. In WSMR

system, it is communicating with each network

performance gathered system for collecting network

performance data and monitoring network

performance data which is produced by Data

Statistic Module (DSM) in WSMR every midnight.

To receive raw data, a WSMR system has to

communicate with other OSS systems periodically,

i.e. Customer Open Processing (COP) System,

Customer Service Guarantee (CSG) System, each

Network Management System (NMS) and

Equipment Control (EC) System. The COP system

manages customer open request and The CSG

system controls and manages every network trouble

data. NMS manages the status of network and the

EC system manages network equipments. To

consider these conditions, we design WSMR system

consisted of communication module as shown in

figure 2; data management module, data statistic

module, monitor module, data gathering module,

service specific processing module.

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To communicate with other systems, WSMR

system uses XML which is one of standard to

present the documentation in different

telecommunication environment to persistent data

consistency and accuracy. Each XML document has

specific attributes which are able to distinguish it

from other documents. Using specific attributes, the

WSMR system verifies and manages raw data from

other systems.

3.1 Data Dispatcher module

The main role of DDM is control and management

of raw data depending on the individual case

because there are many systems which have their

own operating environment and specific operating

process.

The first role of DDM is providing

communication interface to other OSS systems or

NMS systems with web-based communication

technology.

To support web-based communication, DDM

defines web interfaces using Web services

Description Language (WSDL) and registers these

interfaces in the Universal Discovery Description

and Integration (UDDI). Through pre-defined web

interfaces, DDM communicates with other systems

based on the XML-based Simple Object Application

Protocol (SOAP). With these technologies, we do

not consider the environment of each system but just

define the interworking XML data format.

The second is translating external data into

internal common data format. In the case of open

metrics, each NMS interworked with WSMR system

has its own open data format. In the view of WSMR

system, if WSMR system accommodates a new

network service, each module of WSMR system

redefines all of process for the new network service.

So, it is overhead process to every modules

depended on the each open data format. To translate

original data format into internal common data

format, operator has to register mapping information

in the following steps;

z Define common data format

z Check original data format

z Select elements from original XML

document

z Decide mapping rules

z Register mapping information

Through above 5 steps, it is possible to use

common data format in the WSMR system while an

original data format is various.

The third is transferring raw data to target

modules depending on the mapping information

which is managed by SLA operator in the DDM.

Transferring function is worked through queue pool

which is controlled by queue management block as

shown in figure 3.

Figure 2. The components of WSMR system

.NET Framework

Database

Database Data bas e Database Database Database Database Da tab ase Database

Data Monitoring

Module

Data Gathering

Module

Data Supporting

Module

Data Statistics

Module

Portal(GUI & WEB)

Web Server (IIS)

Security & Directory Service

XML

SOAP/HTTP/MSMQ

Biztalk(EAI)

Wireless

Internet

VPN

Internet

Frame

Relay

IP-VPN

ATM

Service Specific

Module

Data

Dispatcher

Module

OSS 1 OSS 2 OSS 3

FrameRelay

NMS

Wireless

Internet

NMS

VPN

NMS

IP-VPN

NMS

ATM

NMS

Web Service

Figure 2: The components of WSMR system

THE WEB-BASED SLA MONITORING AND REPORTING (WSMR) SYSTEM

295

3.2 Service Specific Module

The Service Specific Module (SSM) checks contents

of XML document and retrieves information from it

what SSM has to control. In the case of processing

open metrics, SSM saves information using library

provided by Data Supporting Module (DSM) in the

WSMR database.

In the case of receiving Open Completed Order or

Open Changed Order, SSM finds out initial open

order which is related with the received order. If

there is any unmatched information in the Open

Completed or Open Changed Order, SSM throws it

to the DSM to save log information of error.

Also, SSM sends it to the service-specific process

web service if there is a need to process service

specific control. In that case, SSM receives the result

of processing service-specific process web service

and request DSM to save the information and log. In

the processing of open metric, it is important to keep

the status of processing each customer and SSM

manages it.

Because WSMR system has to accommodate

network service dynamically, we design that SSM

consists of common web service part and service

specific web service part. So, if WSMR system

receives a XML document, SSM checks the type of

XML document, finds out the mapping information

in the XML creation web service list table and calls

related web service for processing service specific

scenario. Otherwise, if there is no need to use a web

service, SSM deletes a web service that is no more

used

3.3 Data Supporting module

Data Supporting Module (DSM) provides libraries

related with Data Base to other modules in WSMR

system. In WSMR system, there are a lot of

information from other systems and are many

database tables depended on the type of information.

So, if there is allowed to access database directly,

every access routine has a dependency on the status

of database tightly.

Because it is inefficient policy that all of modules

in WSMR system control database individually, we

design the module that wholly controls database to

guarantee information consistency in database.

Using DSM, it is easy to access data base without

considering the structure of DB table or other things

and possible to access database efficiently.

3.4 Data Monitoring Module

The WSMR system monitors all information related

with SLA metrics and forecasts the violation of

contract between two parties. If there is a sign to

violate the contract, WSMR system alarms it to the

operator or other systems that control each network.

To support these operations, DM (Data

Monitoring) module monitors periodically all of data

which are saved in data base. The standard value of

each metrics is already saved in metric table before

WSMR system supporting network services.

To monitor all of information is very difficult, so

DM module has a monitoring policy which is based

on the time when each data occurred and generated

by SSM.

3.5 Data Statistics module

DST (Data Statistics) module generates statistic

information. The statistic units are day, week and

month because normal billing unit is month. In

statistic information, there are two types. The first

type is general information which is needed to

represent the state of WSMR operation. The other

type is specific information that is used to manage

Trouble or Network metric. When WSMR system

checks and finds out whether there is a violation or

not, statistic information produced by DST module

is used.

Because it is not necessary to operate all day long,

DST module works on every midnight to generate

statistic information based on gathered information

which is collected.

3.6 Data Gathering module

In providing an SLA in WSMR system, WSMR

system has to gather bulk data from other systems.

The amount of bulk data is very huge and each

interworked system has its own interworking

method. Considering these conditions, we design

Figure

The structure of data dispatcher

module

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DG (Data Gathering) module which has a charge to

gather information with adapting individual

interworking method instead of ID module. There

are several types to communicate with other

systems, i.e. NMS. DG module provides a container

which accommodates interworking sub-modules

4 THE RESULT OF EXPERI-

MENTAL TEST

In this paper, we set a test server to test the

performance of WSMR system; P4 2.8GHz * 8, 32G

Memory, Windows XP professional, generate

incoming raw data and increase it.

As shown in figure 4, the processing time is not

related to the number of concurrent incoming raw

data. From a case of 500 up to 3000 incoming data,

the processing count in a second is climbing up but

the count is climbing down over 3000. In the result

of test, we know that the default processing time is

needed whether concurrent count is many or not.

Over 10000 counts, the processing capability is

stabilized and the WSMR system is more adjusted

large scale processing conditions.

Figure 4: The experimental result of the WSMR system

and DDM’s performance

5 CONCLUSIONS

In the early of 2000s, there are several suggestions

of providing SLA in the view of several ways. One

of them is QoS-centered SLA architecture and the

other is a legacy-extension architecture depended on

the extension of legacy reporting or monitoring

system. In these suggestions, there is no way to

communicate with other Operating Support Systems

which don’t provide specific interworking

technologies like CORBA. To overcome this

problem, this paper provides architecture of SLA

system which is operated on a web-based

communication technology to communicate with

other systems which are operated in the different

operating environment.

Supporting SLA means to report or monitor the

status of network service quality in time for each

network service customer and if there is no way to

provide SLA in time, SLA function doesn’t have its

right role. To provide in-time service, it is needed to

build several modules to manipulate raw data and

transfer it to target modules.

This paper design and develop the WSMR system

which is consisted of several blocks to manipulate

raw data in times.

In the future, we will design not only web-based

communication mechanism but also other type of

communication mechanism.

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“http://global.mci.com/terms/us/products/advantage/”

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

500 1500 3000 10000 20000

Concurrent co unt of inc omin

raw data

(

count

)

(count/sec)

WSMR system

DDM(w/ single

thread)

DDM(w/ multi

thread)

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