Extend Management Capabilities to MPLS

As network services consolidate onto a common MPLS core, network operations staffs are faced with increasing challenges to:

• Maintain an accurate representation of the various, logical service models and how they relate to the physical network
• Correctly associate service with logical and physical resource problems across a multilayer, multiservice network
• Determine and verify the effects that network resource problems have on virtual services in networks with recursive network layers

The Cisco MPLS Assurance Manager, a service management application that installs on top of the latest Cisco Active Network Abstraction (ANA), is designed to help operations staffs meet these challenges. ANA is a network resource management solution that serves as an active mediation layer between the operation and network layers, and provides applications and APIs for operation support system (OSS) and business support system (BSS) applications.

With Cisco MPLS Assurance Manager, your organization can:

• Extend the scope of Cisco ANA to MPLS technologies
• Provide network operations staff with enhanced visibility of MPLS VPN, Pseudowire, and Traffic Engineering topologies to help direct trouble verification and troubleshooting activities better than paper records can
• Enable network operations with additional tools for monitoring and verifying MPLS and VPN connectivity
• Obtain impact analysis information to help prioritize service restoration/problem resolution activities
• Help network operations determine impacted VPN sites and customers faster than having to refer to an external provisioning system or paper records
• Extend the APIs available with ANA to provide access to MPLS VPN, Traffic Engineering and Pseudowire inventory information, as well as impact analysis data. These APIs are available from the ANA Integration Software Development Kit and its associated developer program.