JAIN(tm) SS7 Operations, Adminstration and Maintenance (OAM) API Public Draft [01 September 99]: Overview

The JAIN(tm) SS7 OAM API defines the attributes and operations required by a Management Application to provision and manage a JAIN OAM compliant SS7 Stack including the capability to collect statistics and handle alarms emitted by the Stack.

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In order to operate, administrate and manage the components of an SS7 network, a network operator needs the ability to set and inspect certain values that characterize the configuration of the network components. Each SS7 stack vendor provides their own proprietary method for setting and inspecting the characteristics of network components. As a result the management of an SS7 node is tied to a vendor's implementation, and so is not portable across all SS7 Stacks.

By defining a standard JavaTM API for managing an SS7 Stack (JAIN OAM), each SS7 stack vendor can map from the JavaTM methods defined in this API to their own proprietary management interface (usually a series of C functions). Assuming that all SS7 stack vendors implement this mapping, any SS7 management application that uses the JAIN OAM API specification will have the ability to manage any JAIN compliant SS7 stack. Figure 1 illustrates how the JAIN OAM API specification allows the development of portable management applications.

Figure 1 - Application portability provided by the JAIN OAM API specification

To effectively manage the resources provided by an SS7 network, it is necessary to monitor and measure the present, and estimate the future performance, utilization and availability of these resources. Proprietary management interfaces typically employ a combination of measurements and alarms to monitor the current status of the SS7 Network. From these results an operator can derive the expected future performance. Measurements (or statistics) are network characteristics that are occasionally or periodically polled by management applications. Alarms, on the other hand, are used to inform management applications that an unexpected change in state has occurred within a network element. While measurement requests are explicitly initiated by management applications, the sending of alarms to management applications is automatically triggered when a particular condition becomes true.

A complete list of the potential fault, real-time, performance, network administration, accounting and configuration measurements that potentially can be invoked by a manager application are listed for MTP-L3, SCCP, ISUP and TCAP protocol layers in the ITU recommendation for monitoring and measuring SS7 networks (ITU Q.752). These measurements are the raw, primitive data that potentially can be extracted from an SS7 network and utilized by a manager application. This is not an exhaustive list of measurements but rather a collection of what may be considered the measurements most desirable to collect from a monitoring, control and maintenance point of view. Recommendations are given for measurements regarding the categorization, unit of measurement, when and how often collection should be made, and whether or not it is defined as obligatory from a management point of view to present these measurements. Although this clearly defined set of statistics is contained in an international recommendation, most proprietary management interfaces only support a subset of the obligatory measurements listed.

The JAIN OAM API specification will use the Managed Object (MO) paradigm for managing the components of an SS7 network. A more detailed explanation of the managed object model can be found in the OSI systems management overview (ITU-T Recommendation X.701). A MO is an external representation of a functional and physical domain of a system. A set of attributes and valid operations are defined for each MO. The attribute values define an instance of a MO while the operations may be performed on the MO. By representing each component in an SS7 network as a managed object it will be possible to inspect the attributes of that component and modify the component through the operations it's associated MO supplies.

Figure 2 - JAIN TCAP and JAIN OAM objects and their relationship with an SS7 stack

Figure2 depicts the relationship between JAIN OAM objects, JAIN TCAP objects and an SS7 stack. Each stack vendor shall be responsible for implementing the interaction between the JAIN objects and their SS7 stack. Whether or not two physical stacks are used for high availability shall be hidden from a JAIN application by the stack vendor's implementation.

Each Protocol layer supported has a discreet set of MOs defined. For each MO a set of attributes, allowable operations and possible alarms and statistics (events) that may be emitted by the MO shall be defined.

For each protocol layer a particular MO, hereafter known as a 'Protocol Layer MO', shall be used to create instances of any MOs belonging to that layer. Once an instance of a MO has been created an application may directly modify or inspect the characteristics of the MO using the operations the MO supplies.

An application shall express an interest in MOs belonging to a particular protocol layer of the SS7 Stack by registering with the appropriate Protocol Layer MO as an Event Listener. Once registered as a Listener, an application will be informed of state changes in any of the MOs belonging to that layer by Events sent to the application from the MOs. Note that in SS7 stack management systems these Events are frequently known as 'alarms'. For the purposes of the JAIN OAM API specification Release 1.0, the scope of the MOs supported will be limited to the MOs belonging to the MTP-2, MTP-3, SCCP and TCAP layers. An application may register as an Event Listener for more than one protocol layer. If an application registers as a Listener for more than one protocol layer, the application shall receive Events from each layer.

Packages
jain.protocol.ss7.oam	This package contains the main interfaces and classes of the JAIN Operations, Administration and Maintenance API.
jain.protocol.ss7.oam.mtp2	This package contains all of the classes and interfaces that are required to provision and maintain an SS7 stack at the MTP Level 2 layer.
jain.protocol.ss7.oam.mtp3	This package contains all of the classes and interfaces that are required to provision and maintain an SS7 stack at the MTP Level 3 layer.
jain.protocol.ss7.oam.sccp	This package contains all of the classes and interfaces that are required to provision and maintain an SS7 stack at the SCCP layer.
jain.protocol.ss7.oam.tcap	This package contains all of the classes and interfaces that are required to provision and maintain an SS7 stack at the TCAP layer.

JAIN(tm) SS7 OAM API

Standard Java(tm) Interface to Provision and Maintain an SS7 Stack

Public Draft [01 September 99]