Mediation Technology

Most Network Management solutions are typically beset with the problem of managing multi-vendor and multi-protocol network elements. Often building a solution encompassing this diversity leads to applications becoming non-scalable and less open to managing new protocols. Further these applications are weighed down by network interfacing functionality rather building higher level management functionality.

The image below depicts the mediation technology. The management applications communicate with the network devices through the power of mediation layer that lies in-between them. Hence it is apt to say that the mediation layer lies as a common point of convergence between the management applications and the network elements.

The Management Applications could be Element Management Systems (EMS), Network Management System (NMS) offering FCAPS management functionalities, J2EE applications, OSS and more. The network elements could be any devices encompassing technologies such as IP, Cable, Optical, DSL, Wireless etc., using SNMP, TL1, CLI etc., as management protocols.

Customer Benefits

• Open Standards and Cross Platform- Mediation Server is built on internet standard technologies such as Java, HTTP, RMI, CORBA and XML. These technologies serve the developers with more enhanced ways of developing custom based network management solutions, quicker than ever before. It also ensures greater productivity and interoperability.

• Scalability - The Mediation Server's distributed architecture provides for N:N mapping between Management Applications and Mediation Servers. Multiple user applications can simultaneously talk to the Mediation Server for carrying out protocol related processing. User applications can massively scale-up to manage any number of network elements by deploying multiple Mediation Servers.

• Personalization and Customization- Mediation Server can be customized to meet specific user needs.

  • Management Protocols - Mediation Server supports SNMP (v1,v2c,v3), TL1, CORBA, XML and Telnet/CLI out-of-the-box. It also includes a simple provider interface that facilitates integration of other management protocols.

  • Extending Services - You can easily customize the services of Data Collection, Configuration, Notification to suit your needs and also plug-in your custom services with ease.

  • Rich set of deployment options - Once the management solution is built, the same solution can be deployed in a number of ways i.e. craft management interface, single server deployment on JRE (or) on J2EE server like WebLogic, distributed server deployment on JRE (or) on J2EE servers.

• Ease of Configuration and Programability- Configurations of Mediation Server are XML driven and are easy to understand and configure. Extensive APIs and multiple ways of accessing services i.e through Java API , and RMI / CORBA API(s), cater to very high degree of programming capability for User Applications.

Key Features

• Mediation Services Management & Administration enables in easy development and management of services through a common interface.

• Out-of-box Mediation Services reduces time and effort of developers in developing management applications.

• Protocol Provider Management & Administration enables a protocol neutral user application coupled with the features of flexibility and extensibility.

• Out-of-box Protocol Provider Services facilitates in savings on resources and focusing on higher-level management functionality.

• Service Access Interface facilitates in the access of the Mediation Services through easy-to-use Java and remote APIs.

• Multiple types of Deployment is greatly facilitated, wherein you have the flexibility in choosing the deployment that best fits your design.

The AdventNet Mediation Server is built to address the needs of:

• J2EE Developers : They can take advantage of readily available service beans for 'Data Collection', 'Configuration' and 'Notification' and deploy them in J2EE servers. In addition customer's services deployed in Mediation Server can be easily accessed with bean components.

• EMS Developers : They can build their applications in protocol-neutral way using Mediation layer. Applications can take advantage of out-of-the box providers for TL1, SNMP (v1,v2c,v3) and CLI to carryout configuration tasks and be notified of fault messages from network elements.

• NMS Developers : They can build high-end Fault, Configuration and Performance management applications in a scalable way with the capability to deploy them incrementally in a distributed environment. Applications can take advantage of out-of-the box services offered by Mediation layer such as 'Data Collection', 'Configuration' and 'Notification'. Since network facing function is looked after by Mediation, developers can focus on management functionality.

About AdventNet Mediation Server

The image below depicts the components of the AdventNet Mediation Server and the applications.

The AdventNet Mediation Server provides the necessary infrastructure, with a comprehensive suite of cross platform development modules, APIs as well as packaged applications. The Mediation Server leverages XML, HTTP, JDBC and other standards to deliver the most scalable and customizable Mediation Services. To communicate with managed systems (network elements, systems and applications) it supports SNMP (v1,v2c,v3), TL1, XML, CORBA, Telnet/CLI protocols out-of-the-box. 

AdventNet Mediation Server is a clustered, multi-protocol, mediation service for telecom network management applications. It is designed for scalable multi-tier architectures like J2EE that are the basis for many OSS and NMS products and solutions being built today. It provides a uniform interface for user applications accessing Mediation Server. 

It includes support for SNMPv1/v2c/v3, TL1, CLI and other protocols and enables adding custom protocol support to the common application interface. In addition to protocol support, it supports load-balanced network facing services like data collection, event management, and device configuration. The AdventNet Mediation Server is architected to scale with the growth of the managed network.