Extending SNMP Management to GSM Radio Devices

In Telecommunication networks, a high-performance and reliable management of alarm messages is more important than in traditional IP networks. TLC networks comprise up to thousands of heterogeneous Network Elements (NEs) and they generate high alarm traffic due to bad weather, correlated faults and logging activity. In this scenario, alarm messages have an extreme informative value and cannot be lost. TMN framework and CMIP protocol have been proposed to address these problems, but they are very complex to implement, especially on the NE side, where simplicity and low-cost are crucial issues. SNMP protocol is far easier to implement and SNMP-based management solutions are standard and well established. Unfortunately, SNMP lacks the reliability and performance needed in the telecommunication domain. In this paper, we present our experience in designing a high performance and reliable protocol over SNMP, suited for the management of a GSM network. We implemented a manager based on such protocol, and integrated it into an SNMP management system. Siemens ICN has adopted our solution as the reference system for the development and testing of agent/manager SNMP products in the SRAAL family of GSM radio devices.