Nortel INM 3.1, INM Broadband 3.1 Release Note

Release Notes

Integrated Network Management Products

INM Broadband

Release Notes For Release 3.1

Document release: issue 1.0
Date: November 1997

*NTse68aA.0100*

Integrated Network Management Products

INM Broadband

Release Notes For Release 3.1

Document status: Issue 1.0
Date: November 1997

1997 Northern Telecom
All rights reserved

Ethernet is a trademark of Xerox Corporation.
HP is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard Co.
NCD is a trademark of Network Computing Devices
S/DMS AccessNode is a trademark of Northern Telecom.
S/DMS TransportNode is a trademark of Northern Telecom.
Tektronix is a trademark of Tektronix Corporation.
UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
VT100 is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Mass.
X Window System is a trademark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

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Publication history

November 20, 1997

1.0 (Jacques Kuftedjian)

- Official Release for RTM.

November 20, 1997

0.2 Draft (Jacques Kuftedjian)

- Release for review only.

October 10, 1997

0.1 Draft (Jacques Kuftedjian)

- Initial release for review only.

INM Broadband Issue 1.0

Table of Contents

About this document 7

Structure of the document 7
Audience 7

Summary of Features 9

Release Notes 13

1. Installation 13
Upgrades 13
New Installs 13

2. Federated Networks 13

3. Problem Analyzer 14

4. Partitioned Access 14

5. Alarm History 15

6. Improved On-Line Help 15

7. Bridging 15

8. MOAs 15

9. Fault Management 16

10. Connection Management 16

11. Remote Inventory and Shelf Level Graphics 16

Table of Contents vof24

List of Terms 19

Appendix 1:
Technical support and information 21

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

vi of 24 Table of Contents

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

About this document

This document describes the INM Broadband Release 3.1 release notes that
the users should be aware of before using the software application.

The items that are listed in this document will be addressed in the upcoming
releases of INM Broadband.

It is strongly recommended that users and administrators read all relevant User
Guides prior to installing and using the product.

Structure of the document

This document is structured in a way to highlight the operational
considerations for each of the features introduced in this release. The main
section of the document is entitled Release Notes which is divided into several
subsections corresponding to the actual new features introduced in INM
Broadband Release 3.1.

7of24

Audience

This Release Notes document has been specifically prepared for the following
audience:

• INM Broadband Software Administrators

• INM Broadband Users

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

8of24 About this document

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

Summary of Features

The new features offered by the Integrated Network Management Broadband
Release 3.1 applications are summarized below.

• Federated Networks support which provides the ability to manage a

network of up to 5500 network elements and 750 controller (OPC/MOA)
pairs in a scalable environment by distributing the resources and data
required for the network across a number of communicating INM
workstations.

— Global Alarm Acknowledgement in a scalable environment provides an

unconditional propagation of alarm acknowledgement to all INM
workstations managing OPCs and MOAs that support alarm
surveillance functionality . Peer-to-peer workstation communications is
used in the INM federation to perform global alarm acknowledgement.

• Partitioned Accesssupport which allows the graphical view of the network

to be divided into several sub-views which may contain any or all of the
network elements in the network, and which can be configured to permit
some or all management functions to be enabled for the user.

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• Problem Analyzer (PA) performs Intelligent Alarm Filtering (IAF) which

provides the correlation of alarms into direct detect and related alarm
events into a single Network Problem Report. The PA provides additional
information to the user by showing the alarm correlation, viewing
problems not alarms, giving probable cause, providing a NTP reference to
fix the problem, and performing preventive analysis. This feature is
optional and is delivered on a separate CD-ROM/DAT Tape.

• Alarm History and Enhanced Audit Trail for S/DMS OC-3/12/48, and

S/DMS OC-192. The Alarm History Retrieval option provides the ability
to retrieve historical alarm information for the network element from the
graphical user interface of INM Release 3.1. The Enhanced Audit Trail
(EAT) provides the capability to record the alarm information of raised,
acknowledged and cleared alarms.

• Facility Parameter Provisioning which extends the Tributary Facility

State Provisioning feature on the previous S/DMS Network Manager
Release 6.00 to include optical facilities (OC3, OC12, OC48) in addition

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

10 of 24 Summary of Features

to electrical facilities (DS1, DS3, STS1). The user will be capable of
provisioning the parameters supported by each type of facility.

• OC-192 Performance Monitoring, Inventory, and Fault Management. In

this Release, a new PM category, Intermediate Path will be added to the
PM statistics display to enable a user to query STS path PMs for OC-192.
Inventory queries to OC-192 NEs are also supported for all new cards
which occupy existing shelves and for the new extension shelves.

• AccessNode Express (ANX) Fault Management and Shelf Level View

support is provided. All severities of alarms (warning, minor, major,
critical) raised against ANX equipment are reported on the ANX nodes and
are included in summary alarm counts for groups containing ANX nodes
as well as in the GNB alarm banner. The shelf level graphics feature
permits the user to view the layout of the shelf as well as the cards installed
in the shelf and view which circuit packs or equipment have alarms raised
against them.

• OC-3 Express Connection Management, Performance Monitoring and

Remote Inventory (including Shelf Level Graphics) support is provided in
INM 3.1. INM 3.1 supports a new nodal connection management for OC-3
Express NEs for functionalities such as Time Slot Assignment (TSA),
Time Slot Interchange (TSI), Hairpinning, Path switched connections and
Drop-and-Continue and Broadcast. Remote Inventory, Shelf Level
Graphics and Performance Monitoring are supported with functionalities
similar to that provided for other types of NEs.

• Improved on-line help which has evolved to a World Wide Web (WWW)

oriented method and which provides the capability to access the INM 3.1
documentation from within the graphical user inteface. Help information
is available in HTML format, to permit access with a WWW browser . The
browser used in this release is the International version of Netscape
Navigator 3.01, which is provided with the Integrated Network
Management Broadband Release 3.1.

• Printing support which enables the user to print lists or text areas within a

window. The user can also print the whole graphical window screen
containing the graphical information to a postscript printer or to save the
image in a postscript file in a user definable directory. The texts and lists
are saved in a text format, which can be viewed by a text editor or printed.
Printing can be done in color or black & white (grey scale), depending on
the printer’s capabilities.

• Generic workstation and X terminal engineering guidelines which

provides information about the engineering characteristics on unsupported
platforms (workstations as well as X-terminals) in order to be able to
properly use these unsupported platforms to gain the best results from INM

3.1.

• Increased bridging contr ol is introduced in this release in order to support

scalability . The user has more control over when bridging is performed on

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

Summary of Features 11 of 24

the controllers in the network. Any user on a given INM workstation in the
network who has the proper user/group permissions (for access to the
GNE) is able to initiate bridging to any controller in the network which
supports bridging. This includes those controllers not directly connected to
the specific INM workstation.

• Packaging evolution. The Integrated Network Management Broadband

Release 3.1 will be released on CD-ROM in addition to DAT tape to
account for the increasing popularity of the CD-ROM storage format.

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

12 of 24 Summary of Features

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

Release Notes

1. Installation

It is strongly recommended that users read and understand the installation
procedures in the User Guide before installing INM Broadband.

Upgrades

INM Broadband 3.1 runs only on HP-UX 10.10/10.20. Therefore existing
workstations running versions of HP-UX operating system earlier than
HP-UX 10.10 must be upgraded to HP-UX 10.10 or HP-UX 10.20 before
running INM Broadband 3.1 software.

T o upgrade a workstation running S/DMS Network Manager Release 4, 5 or 6
on a HP-UX 9.05 operating system, the following steps are required:

• Save the configuration of the previous S/DMS Network Manager

workstation using the “Transferring the configuration database” procedure
in the INM Broadband GUI User Guide.

• Upgrade the HP-UX operating system to 10.10 or 10.20.

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• Install INM Broadband 3.1 software using the “Installing the INM

Broadband GUI software” procedure in the INM Broadband GUI User
Guide.

• Restore the configuration previously saved using the “Transferring the

configuration database” procedure in the INM Broadband GUI User
Guide.

New Installs

1 When an alternate directory other than /opt/nortel (default in INM 3.1) is

selected, the user will get this misleading error message which can be
ignored: “/opt/nortel was not found”.

2. Federated Networks

It is strongly recommended that users read and understand the Federated
Networks User Guide before installing INM Broadband.

1 When a Client is indirectly monitoring both Primary and Backup

controllers through the same server, and if any one of the controllers
(primary or backup) is deleted from the server, this causes a promotion on

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

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the client side and updates the Management Server List incorrectly by
deleting the server from the Controller List.

2 After a connection is dropped from the preferred Direct Server, the

reluctant promoted INM can potentially use all the available connection
slots at the Controller and lock-out the preferred Direct server. In other
words, when a client is promoted, and if the maximum direct connections
to the Controller has been attained, then it will not be bumped out by a
server which has been initially configured to have a direct connection to
that Controller. The GNE user will have to decommission some of the
reluctant promoted connections, in order to free some slots at the
Controller.

3 If a reluctantly promoted controller is deleted from the list of controllers,

the GNB/GNE may exit unexpectedly. To avoid this problem the user
should wait until the promoted controller demotes, or edit the controller to
be monitored directly, save, and then delete the controller.

4 When importing large numbers of controllers in the GNE that result in very

large numbers of network elements (e.g. more than 1000 NEs) being added
to a single network window, sometimes the scroll bar will “jump” so that
the new network elements are not visible after they are added. Note that in
this situation, the new network elements have still been successfully added
to the window . It is just that they are not visible after being added like they
normally are because the scroll bar is not positioned at the very bottom of
the window. This problem might also occur in the GNB when large
numbers of network elements are added. It will not always be obvious that
new network elements have been successfully added to a network window
when more than 1000 network elements are added at once. This may cause
some initial confusion about where the new network elements are or may
cause the GNE user to believe that the operation has failed for some
reason. If this situation occurs, drag the scroll bar of the window in which
the network elements were added to the very bottom of the window. The
new network elements should then be visible.

5 Indirect MOAs show MOA software load in the Software +Bridge list

instead of the NE release (eg. MOA04BI is displayed instead of OC3 MOA
REL 2.0).

3. Problem Analyzer

1 The OC-48 High Power Transmitter and OpAmp Line and Section alarms

are not supported on this release of the Problem Analyzer. OC-48 High
Power Transmitter and OpAmp Line and Section alarms do not generate
problems on the GNB. Problems may be generated on the primary OC-48
cards instead of being pin-pointed to the HPTX or OpAmp cards.

4. Partitioned Access

1 If a GNB is displaying a view with at least one excluded and suspended

NE, resuming alarm reporting on one of those network elements will cause
the GNB’s status icon to change from the green checkmark to the yellow

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

triangle. Once in that state, the status icon will be “stuck” showing the
yellow triangle, even though all network elements are reporting. There is
no impact on actual alarm reporting: just the status icon.

2 The user cannot assign alarm filters to NEs as they are being enrolled. The

ability to select alarm filters and apply them against all future NEs is not
possible in this release. However, the ability to set up future NEs to show
all alarms or show no alarms is still possible. The user will have to assign
alarm filters to NEs after they are enrolled: he would select an NE, bring
up the alarm filter dialog and then select the alarm filters that will filter the
NEs alarms.

5. Alarm History

1 For Threshold Crossing Events that are provisioned as alerts, there will be

a corresponding record with the severity set to undetermined. Currently the
Alarm History function for these alert records is incapable of filtering them
out. The user will see some alert records in the browser which he should
not see based on the filter settings. These alerts cannot be filtered out. To
avoid the problem, the user may set alerts to alarms so that they can be
handled like other alarms.

6. Improved On-Line Help

1 The colors of the links that are displayed in the Netscape main window

(legend of icons for example) do not correspond to the colors that are
displayed in the GNB. For example, a turquoise link (active link) appears
as green and a loss of association (blue) appears as white. In addition to
that, when the user invokes Help from a Link object menu and is brought
to a table showing the Ring traffic Link states, the background color of the
link in the table is white (instead of blue which is the background color of
the Netscape main window) and therefore do not show the link colors
properly.

Release Notes 15 of 24

7. Bridging

1 In the GNB, the bridging status field in the Controller List Display for

indirectly monitored controllers, is reported as unknown when it is not.
Therefore the GNB users cannot determine the correct bridging status of
their indirect controllers. The user should check the GNB of the server
monitoring the controller or any GNE.

8. MOAs

1 When the user attempts to login to the MOA while he already has a login

session with that MOA, the existing login window is not brought to the
foreground as it happens for OPC logins. The user has to search through
the windows to find the login window.

2 MOA based Remote-login sessions are not subject to the INM limitation

of six concurrent active login sessions. This applies to all MOA logins
(OC3 Express, Titan, DV45), NPC logins, and NE logins (T itan NE, OC3
Express NEs). The reason is due to the different manner in which remote

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

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login is implemented for MOA based Controllers (as opposed to OPCs).
The user could potentially open any number of login sessions consuming
more and more resources and ultimately affecting performance of other
functionality . The user has to take note of this limitation and ensure to keep
the number of open sessions per GNB session, at any time to 6.

9. Fault Management

1 The OPC collects OPC alarms all the time. Turning the pointer alarm on

triggers the NE to raise the corresponding Pointer Alarm. The Pointer
Alarm is a “pointer to the OPC alarm monitor which contains actual OPC
alarms”. The OPC alarms are still shown even though the Pointer Alarm is
de-provisioned.

10. Connection Management

1 When the user selects the Edit command from the nodal object menu in the

middle of building an end-to-end connection for the OC3 Express, there is
no dialog presented to confirm if the user wants to abandon the NE
navigation mode. Therefore, if the user selects the Edit command from the
nodal object menu, he is placed into an Edit connection mode right away.

2 When editing an STS-3c connection on an OC-12 TBM MUX system, the

user will always get a failure message indicating that the data could not be
applied to the NE. This error message can be misleading if the edit was
actually successful. There is no workaround for this problem. The user
should use the audit facilities to check if the edit was successful.

3 When 2 Connection Management windows (from 2 GNBs) are opened for

the same OC-3 Express NE and if connections are modified from the craft
interface simultaneously, the connection changes made at the craft
interface are not captured in the Connection Management inventory
displays. Both Connection Management windows have to be closed and
re-opened in order to see the connections. The OC-3 Express Network
Element does not provide an automatic change notification.

4 While in-service roll over is being performed at the OPC the channels

involved in the roll over (i.e the ones that are being rolled over from and
the ones being rolled over to) should be marked used in both directions in
the INM Channel Usage dialog. At the moment for the Bridge and Switch
stages of the in-service roll over only one direction is marked used. The
user may be misled into thinking the channels are available for uni
directional connections when in fact they are not. If the user then tries to
provision the connection, then the OPC will reject it. The dialog that comes
up does not tell him the reason for rejecting this connection.

11. Remote Inventory and Shelf Level Graphics

1 When the Query inventory dialog is opened and the user wants to select

individual NEs from the “confine search to” area and if there is a large
number of NEs in the span so that he has to scroll down the NE list, then
if the user checks or unchecks any of the NEs except the first one, the

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

Release Notes 17 of 24

whole NE list shifts to the right. Therefore, if the user wants to check (or
uncheck) specific NEs, he has to scroll to the left to check (or uncheck) the
next NE. This can be annoying to the customer even though it is a minor
problem.

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

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INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

List of Terms

ADM Add Drop Multiplexer
AISS Alarm Indication Signal Second
AN AccessNode
ANX AccessNode Express
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange
BCV Bipolar Code Violation
BES Bipolar Errored Second
BLSR Bidirectional Line Switched Ring
BSES Bipolar Severly Errored Seconds
CCITT Consultative Committee on International Telegraphy and Telephony

CLFI Common Language Facility Identifier
CMT Character Mode Terminal
CPC Corporate Product Code
CPG Circuit Pack Group
CSMA/CD Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection
CV Code Violation
DAT Digital Audio Tape
DCE Data Communication Equipment
DCN Data Communications Network
DMS Digital Multiplex System
DTE Data Termination Equipment
DV45 Digital Video Codec
PA Problem Analyzer
ES Errored Second
FC Frame Failure Count
GNB Graphical Network Browser
GNE Graphical Network Editor
GUI Graphical User Interface

Draft

19 of 24

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

20 of 24 List of Terms

HP Hewlett-Packard
HP-VUE Hewlett-Packard Visual User Environment
IAF Intelligent Alarm Filtering
ICCCM Inter-Client Communication Convention Manual
IDLC Integrated Digital Loop Carrier
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
INM Integrated Network Management Broadband Release 3.0/3.1
ISO International Standards Organization
LAN Local Area Network
MAP Maintenance and Administrative Position
MAPCI Maintenance and Administrative Position Command Interpreter
MOA Managed Object Agent
NE Network Element
NPC Network Processing Card
NTP Northern Telecom Publication
PEC Product Engineering Code
OAM&P Operations, Administration, Maintenance, and Provisioning
OS Operating system
OC-3 Optical Signal Carrier Level 3 (155.520M bps)
OC-12 Optical Signal Carrier Level 12 (622.080 M bps)
OC-48 Optical Signal Carrier level 48 (2.488 G bps)
OPC OPerations Controller
OSI Open Systems Interconnect
PM Performance Monitoring
SAS Severly Errored Frame/Alarm Indication Signal Second
SDH Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
S/DMS Synchronous/Digital Multiplexing System
SEFS Severly Errored Frame Second
SES Severely Errored Second
SOC Span of Control
SONET Synchronous Optical Network
STS-1 Synchronous Transport Signal (at 51.84 Mb/s)
TCP/IP Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
TN-1X TransportNode STM-1 Multiplexing Network Element
UAS Unavailable Second
UDLC Universal Digital Loop Carrier
UI User Interface
VTBM Virtual Tributary Bandwidth Management
WAN Wide Area Network
X.25 CCITT protocol used for wide-area packet switching. OSI Data communication standard

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

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Appendix 1:
Technical support and information

Technical Assistance Service

Canada, United States or International

For 24-hour emergency technical support and technical support for system upgrade, that is,
problems that may lead to payload-affecting failures or issues that prevent payload protection
switching, please call the following number:

1-800-275-3827 (1-800-ASK-ETAS)

From 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., please call the following toll-free number for technical support, upgrade
notification or upgrade reporting:

1-800-275-8726 (1-800-ASK-TRAN)

Southern Region

Northern Telecom Inc.
5555 Windward Parkway West, Building B
Alpharetta, Georgia 30201

[phone]

Draft

Central Region

Northern Telecom Inc.
475 Martingale Road
Schaumburg, Illinois 60173

[phone] or 8389

Pacific Region (North)

Northern Telecom Inc.
2305 Camino Ramon
San Ramon, California 94583
[phone] or 1-800-456-0854

Pacific Region (South)

Northern Telecom Inc.
300 North Lake Avenue
Pasadena, California 91101

[phone]

Northeast Region

Northern Telecom Inc.
200 Summit Lake Drive
Valhalla, New York 10595

[phone]

Western Region

Northern Telecom Inc.
5575 DTC Parkway, Suite 150
Englewood, Colorado 80112

[phone]

Southwest Region

Northern Telecom Inc.
2221 Lakeside Blvd.
Richardson, Texas 75082-4399

[phone]

Eastern Region

Northern Telecom Inc.
2010 Corporate Ridge
McLean, Virginia 22102

[phone]

INM Release 3.1 Release Notes Issue 1.0

22 of 24 Appendix 1: Technical support and information

Canada Technical Assistance Service Centers

FSE West Main Location
(Alberta)

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
10235, 101st Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 3G1

[phone]

FSE West
(British Columbia , Yukon and Northwest
Territories)

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
#410, 13251 Delf Place
Richmond, B. C. V6V 2A2

[phone]

FSE West
(Manitoba, North-Western Ontario)

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
360 Main Street, Suite 1400
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 3Z3

[phone]

Ontario

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
P. O. Box 3000
Brampton, Ontario L6V 2M6

[phone] or 1-800-661-3578

FSE East (Newfoundland)

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
63 Thorburn Rd.
St. John’s, Newfoundland A1B 3M2

[phone] or 1-800-661-4827

FSE East
(Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island)

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
1701 Hollis St., Suite 900
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 3M8

[phone]

FSE West
(Saskatchewan)

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
PO Box 770
Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 3A8

[phone]

Quebec

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
105 Marcel Laurin Blvd.
St. Laurent, Quebec H4N 2M3

[phone]

FSE East (New Brunswick)

Northern Telecom Canada Limited
1 Brunswick Square, 4th Floor
Saint John, New Brunswick E2L 4K2

[phone] or [phone]

INM Broadband Release 3.1 Issue 1.0

Integrated Network Management Products

Integrated Network
Management Broadband
Release 3.1
Release Notes

 1997 Northern Telecom
All rights reserved
Information subject to change without notice.
Issue 1.0
November 1997
Printed in Canada