5.2 Interface levels

32.1013GPPPrinciples and high level requirementsRelease 17Telecommunication managementTS

5.2.1 Overview

The management interfaces are studied here from five different perspectives or levels:

1) Information Model Level (network resource model and interactions used between manager and agent, or equivalent);

2) Solution Set (SS) Level;

3) Application protocol (end-to-end, upper layers protocol running between manager-agent, or equivalent);

4) Networking protocol (lower layer protocols carrying the information in/out the manager and agent, or equivalents);

5) Physical (mapping of the manager and agent, or equivalents, roles into physical entities).

5.2.2 Information Model level

This level defines the network resources under management and the management information exchanged between manager-agent, and equivalent, across the management interface.

Type 2 and type 4a interfaces (Itf-N and Itf-P2P in figure 1) require the specification at this level and at the level defined in 5.2.3.

5.2.3 Solution Set (SS) level

For an NRM or an Interface at the Information Model, there will be at least one Solution Set defined. A Solution Set is a mapping of the Information Model to one of several Management-application-layer-protocols.

See annex C for the valid 3GPP management IRP Solution Sets (see also ITU-T Recommendation M.3013-2000 [102]).

5.2.4 Management-application-layer-protocol level

This level covers the set of primitives used to pass information across a given interface and the means to establish associations between the application entities (including the related addressing aspects) across a given interface.

3GPP recommends a set of Management-application-layer-protocols (see Annex A).

5.2.5 Networking protocol level

Whatever standardised protocol suite at the networking level that is capable of meeting the functional and operational requirements (including the network addressing aspects) of the Logical and Application Protocol levels of a given management interface, is a valid Networking Protocol for that interface.

A number of requirements shall be met by the Networking Protocol, as follows:

– capability to run over all supported bearers (leased lines, X.25, ATM, Frame Relay …);

– support of existing transport protocols and their applications, such as OSI, TCP/IP family, etc.;

– widely available, cheap and reliable.

The Internet Protocol (IP) is a Networking Protocol that ideally supports these requirements. IP also adds flexibility to how management connectivity is achieved when networks are rolled out, by offering various implementation choices. For instance, these may take the form of:

– Dedicated management intranets.

– Separation from or integration into an operator’s enterprise network.

– Utilisation, in one-way or another, of capacities of the public Internet and its applications or other resources.

5.2.6 Physical level

Though the interaction at the logical level takes place between the management system and the NEs, it is left to the implementer’s choice the possibility to use the Q-Adapter concept of ITU-T TMN Architecture as physical implementation (as defined in ITU-T Recommendation M.3010 [1]).

The present document does not preclude the usage of Q-Adapters at other PLMN management interfaces.