Integrated Transport Network
Future mobile transport networks will face the following challenges: access from a large number of base stations, diversified SLA requirements (such as high bandwidth and low delay), and massive network connections as core networks move closer to users. Existing network tools will not be sufficient for maintaining the current O&M level, unless the workforce is increased. Therefore, carriers require O&M systems to evolve from manual operations to automation and intelligence, and finally autonomy, thereby reducing O&M costs.
To help carriers overcome these challenges, iMaster NCE provides new tools for the mobile transport scenario, including base station service automation, mobile transport SLA assurance, intelligent incident management, and network slice deployment. Carriers can use these tools to achieve rapid deployment in the network construction phase as well as fast fault demarcation and locating in the network O&M phase.
Key Features
Base Station Service Automation
iMaster NCE abstracts forwarders and services to provide unified, standard network-level service interfaces for self-provisioning of mainstream services. It provides multiple templates for service configuration and supports automatic parameter verification, effectively improving the service provisioning efficiency. Service-driven tunnel creation also helps to significantly reduce the time required to provision services. During service provisioning, iMaster NCE centrally computes paths and displays the results on a map, facilitating decision making on optimal paths. For VPN services, iMaster NCE provides one-click connectivity checks and supports bandwidth on demand (BoD) and QoS profiles.
Mobile Transport SLA Assurance
To facilitate 5G network O&M, Huawei has launched in-situ flow information telemetry (IFIT), which integrates the RFC 8321 coloring and in-band detection technologies to better measure service packets. It is used in conjunction with Telemetry (which collects data in seconds) and iMaster NCE (which unifies management, control, and computing) to achieve real-time visualization of service quality, minutes-level fault demarcation and locating, and one-click online optimization. This will ultimately shift carriers from "passive O&M, hop-by-hop troubleshooting, and manual recovery" to "proactive O&M, automatic fault locating, and intelligent recovery".
Intelligent Incident Management
Traditionally, fault management was conducted in an alarm-centric way, which involved a complex process and massive number of work orders. Fault locating depended heavily on specialists' experience. To improve fault management efficiency, iMaster NCE provides an intelligent incident management solution, which:
• Introduces machine learning algorithms for alarm denoising and multidimensional clustering. The upgrade from alarm-centric monitoring to incident-centric monitoring greatly reduces the number of work orders
• Combines graph neural networks (GNNs) and knowledge graph-based inference to accurately pinpoint the root causes of faults
• Opens APIs to help onsite engineers learn root causes and troubleshooting status in real time
Network Slice Deployment
Driven by ever-increasing mobile and fixed network service requirements, carriers may run different services on the same network. To prevent services from competing for bandwidth, carriers want to isolate bandwidths of services. The transport network carries various services with distinct traffic characteristics. To meet customer requirements, iMaster NCE provides multi-service isolation (MSI), a network slicing solution that divides one physical network into multiple slices by using FlexE or channelized interfaces. These slices have isolated bandwidths, enabling customers to use one network for multiple purposes.