Focus Group 2 Network Reliability

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Focus Group 2Network Reliability

• PJ Aduskevicz, ATT
• Ross Callon, Juniper
• Wayne Hall, Comcast

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Focus Group Mission Statement

• Define reliability measurements (units) for
  commercial communications networks (i.e.,
  wireline and wireless transport networks,
  including satellite and cable) and for the
  Internet by March 22, 2003.
• Define reasonable, measurable customer-affecting
  outage reporting thresholds for commercial
  communications networks (i.e., wireline and
  wireless transport networks, including satellite
  and cable) and for the Internet by March 22,
  2003.
• Conduct voluntary outage reporting trial, collect
  data, analyze results, and report on the
  validity, usefulness, and timeliness of the
  process and information obtained, and make
  recommendations for improvement.
• Based on trial results (including information on
  services affected by an outage), evaluate and
  report on the reliability of public
  communications network services in the United
  States.
• Should the Commission initiate an inquiry or
  rulemaking with respect to any of the
  above-mentioned issues, the Focus Group will
  provide input to the NRIC, which may make formal
  recommendations as a part of such proceeding(s).
• Evaluate, and report on, the reliability of
  public telecommunications network services in the
  United States.

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Voluntary Trial Outage Reporting Guidelines

• Compiled Guidelines for use by Service Providers,
  which includes
• Units and Thresholds To determine which outages
  are to be reported
• Report Contents To determine what information
  will be reported in confidential outage reports
  to a trusted third party under NDA
• Report Sanitizing To determine what information
  is to be scrubbed from the confidential report
  before the report is made available to NRIC
  participants
• Confidential Report Repository To determine
  which organization will be responsible for
  handling and sanitizing the confidential reports
• Reporting Process To determine the process for
  reporting during the voluntary trial period.
• The data collected during the voluntary outage
  reporting trial is intended for use in improving
  network reliability, such as by providing
  information useful in order to verify and improve
  the NRIC best practices, or to create study
  groups to understand and improve issues
  identified as a result of the data. 
• Specifically, it is not appropriate for reported
  data to be used for Marketing nor for Public
  Relations purposes.

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Voluntary Trial Status

• Process Improvements
• Outage Reporting Guidelines
• Re-notification to all participating
  enterprises (February 21, 2003)
• Technical Contacts
• Positive Reporting
• NCS/NCC Process
• Resources for NCC to assist process
  implementation
• Process Flow Enhancement and Clarification of
  Scrubbed Data
• Clarification of Service Provider review of
  scrubbed data before it is is passed from the NCC
  to the Focus Group, and clarification and
  understanding of the Data Elements to be passed
• Confirms enterprise sensitive data is removed
• Sufficiently protects security information

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NRIC VI Voluntary Outage Reporting Trial Process
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Contents of Confidential Outage Reports

• Reporting carrier / service provider
• Contact person
• Telephone number of contact person
• Start date
• Start time of impact
• Geographic area affected
• Estimated number of customers affected
• Types of services affected (if applicable)
• Duration of outage (hours and minutes)

• Apparent or known cause
• Name of equipment involved OPTIONAL
• Type of equipment involved OPTIONAL
• Specific part of network involved
• Methods used to restore service OPTIONAL
• Steps taken to prevent recurrence
• Root cause and trouble found OPTIONAL
• Applicable best practice OPTIONAL

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Scrubbing of Confidential Reports

• Scrubbing of Outage Reports
• Reporting carrier / service provider is deleted.
  This is replaced by a unique numerical identifier
  for the outage.
• Contact person (name, telephone number, email
  address if present) is deleted.
• Date of incident is left unchanged.
• Time of incident is left unchanged.
• Geographic Area affected is made less specific.
  Only the city or general geographic area is
  maintained in the scrubbed report. The reporting
  service provider can work with the NCC/NCS to
  determine how general the geographic area should
  be after the scrubbing operation.
• Name and type of equipment involved is deleted.  
• Other fields are left unchanged in the scrubbed
  report.  
• Geographic Area affected is made less specific.
  Only the city or general geographic area is
  maintained in the scrubbed report. The reporting
  service provider can work with the NCC/NCS to
  determine how general the geographic area should
  be after the scrubbing operation.  
• Other fields are left unchanged in the scrubbed
  report.
• Scrubbing of Positive Reports
• For positive reports, the only information which
  is maintained after the scrubbing function is the
  industry segment, and the month.

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Network Reliability Steering Committee

• NRSC
• Fourth Quarter 2002 Report

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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02 ReportFCC
Reportable Service Outages(by number of events)
Total outages (23) were at the lowest level of
any quarter, and of any year (117), since the
start of the Baseline Period.
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02 ReportFCC
Reportable Service Outages(by outage index)
The aggregated outage index was at the lowest
level (1263) of any year since the start of the
Baseline Period.
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02 Report

• Analysis of the outages for 4Q02 and Year 2002
  indicates
• The frequencies of Facility, CO Power, and
  Procedural Error, as well as Total outages were
  lower than their Baseline levels and these
  differences were statistically significant.
• Total outages (23) were at the lowest level of
  any quarter, and of any year (117), since the
  start of the Baseline Period.
• Facility outages (7) were at the lowest level of
  any quarter, and of any year (46), since the
  start of the Baseline Period.
• Tandem Switch outages (12) were at the lowest
  level of any year since the start of the Baseline
  Period.
• The aggregated outage index was at the lowest
  level (1263) of any year since the start of the
  Baseline Period.

• Based upon analysis of all outages reported from
  1Q93 through 4Q02, the NRSC notes that
• There is a statistically significant decreasing
  trend in both the number and outage index of
  Facility and Local Switch outages since the start
  of the Baseline Period.
• There is an increasing trend in both the
  frequency and outage index of CO Power outages
  since the start of the Baseline Period the trend
  in frequency is statistically significant.
• There is an increasing trend in both the
  frequency and outage index of Procedural Errors
  as the root cause of outages since the start of
  the Baseline Period. Nevertheless, Procedural
  Error outage frequency exhibits a statistically
  significant decreasing trend since 2Q96.
• CCS outages exhibit statistically significant
  increasing trends in frequency and outage index
  since 1993.

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Reliability Reporting NRSC Reports

• Breakthrough Process Improvement
• The NRSC has begun using an new statistical tool
  that enables trend analysis for Multiple Time
  Windows
• One window for each quarter in past history
• All windows contain most recent quarter
• Allows flexibility with focus retained on recent
  history

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Facility Outage Frequency Data (1Q93 4Q02)
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Facility Outage Index Data (1Q93 4Q02)
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Reliability Reporting NRSC Reports

• The NRSC urges all service providers and
  equipment vendors to review all best practices
  for application in their operations.
• These Best Practices may be found at
  http//www.nric.org/

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Focus Group 2 Back Up
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Focus Group Membership

• PJ Aduskevicz, ATT
• Bonnie Amann, Sprint
• Ken Buckley, Federal Reserve Board
• Robert Burkhardt, Nextel
• Ross Callon, Juniper
• Rick Canaday, ATT
• Kevin Cavanagh, ATT Wireless
• Wayne Chiles, Verizon
• Joe Craig, Qwest
• Bernie Farrell, NCS
• David Fears, Cox Communications
• Lee Fitzsimmons, Nextel
• Brian Goemmer, Western Wireless
• Jeff Goldthorp, FCC
• Wayne Hall, Comcast
• Bruce Harrod, CW
• John Healy, FCC
• Dean Henderson, Nortel Networks
• Bob Holley, Cisco

• Mike Lecocke, SBC
• Chris Liljenstolpe, CW
• Chris MacFarland, Allegiance
• Spilios Makris, Telcordia
• Archie McCain, BellSouth
• Dave McDysan, WorldCom
• Brian Micene, ATT Wireless
• Denny Miller, Nortel
• Erick Mogelgaard, Cox
• Chris Oberg, Verizon Wireless
• Gary Pellegrino, CommFlow Resources
• Bonnie Petti, Verizon Wireless
• Christopher Quesada, PAIX.net
• Karl Rauscher, Lucent
• Arthur Reilly, Cisco Systems
• Ira Richer, The Telesis Group
• Jim Runyon, Lucent
• Andy Scott, NCTA
• Don Smith, NCS

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Internet/IP Service Provider
XYZ Corp
DNS
RADIUS
DHCP
DSL
Wireless
Cable
Dial-Up
Core Backbone
Inter-Domain Routers
Distribution
PSTN
Service Aggregation
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Outage Reporting Units and Thresholds
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NRSC Back Up
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02
ReportIncidents by Failure Category(Facility)
There is a decreasing trend in the number of
Facility outages.
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02
ReportIncidents by Failure Category(Local
Switch)
There is a decreasing trend in the number of
Local Switch outages.
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02
ReportIncidents by Failure Category(CO Power)
There is an increasing trend in the number of CO
Power outages.
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02
ReportIncidents by Failure Category(Common
Channel Signaling)
There is an increasing trend in the number of
CCS outages.
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02
ReportProcedural Error Attributed Outages(by
number of events)
There is an increasing trend in the frequency of
Procedural Errors as the root cause of outages.
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Reliability Reporting NRSC 4Q02
ReportProcedural Error Attributed Outages(by
outage index)
There is an increasing trend in the aggregated
outage index of Procedural Errors as the root
cause of outages.