An Evaluation of Management Techniques for SONET/SDH Telecommunication Networks

A study of SONET network management applications and the load they impart to the network is conducted to provide a better understanding of the capability of various management approaches. In this study, a SONET network is set up in the Advanced Networking Laboratory of the Naval Postgraduate School using four Cisco ONS 15454s. Next, two Element Management Systems, the Cisco Transport Controller and the Cisco Transport Manager, are deployed onto the SONET network. Subsequently, the network traffic of the Element Management Systems is captured and analyzed using a packet analyzer. Link utilization of the two tools is computed using the first–order statistics of the captured traffic distributions. In addition, the Hurst parameter is estimated using the variance–index plot technique (which uses higher–orders statistics of the modeled distributions) to determine the captured traffic’s degree of self–similarity. Finally, the calculated utilization is extrapolated to obtain the link utilization for 2500 network elements (the maximum number supported by the Cisco Transport Manager). The result obtained is useful in determining the maximum number of network elements (Cisco ONS 15454s) that the Cisco Transport Manager can support from a network loading point of view.