A Transactional Approach to Configuring Telecommunications Services

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A Transactional Approach to Configuring
Telecommunications Services

• Tim Kempster
• (tdk_at_dcs.ed.ac.uk)

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Changing Environment

• Telecommunications providers now route voice,
  data, fax and broadband services over wide area
  IP networks.
• Routers (Network Nodes) are becoming more
  intelligent and programmable e.g. Intel IXP1200
  vs ASIC.
• How do we manage and reconfigure these Networks?

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Simple Network Model

• A Transport Medium (Fiber, satellite, microwave)

• Network Nodes (routers, switches, relays)

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Current Management Techniques

• Each Network Node (NN) has a MIB which contains
  fields that can be read and or written to.
• Currently, SNMP supports GetRequest and
  SetRequest Methods on fields in the MIB.

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Motivation for a Transactional Approach

• A reconfiguration task often requires atomic
  changes to, and reads form, MIBs at several
  network nodes.
• When reading several MIB values it is useful to
  see a consistent view. We should not read the
  partial updates of other reconfiguration tasks.

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The Solution
A Transaction Commit Protocol