IP VPN
The Clarity solution for IP VPN provides a full operations framework, combining the needs of both the next generation “all-IP” network and the legacy access networks on which most VPN services rely.
More and more services are being delivered over VPNs; either directly as part of a business VPN service connecting many business offices, or indirectly as operators move to an “all-IP” network in their core.
Many networks, products and operational processes have evolved around a traditional circuit based network. In the IP VPN, things are very different:
- Capacity of the network is no longer limited to the number of users and their bandwidth; the operator can “overbook” the network and rely on the network dynamically routing to support “peaks” in demand
- Meshed networks make the network rather than operator responsible for delivery service quality levels and restoring services in the event of a fault in the VPN
- Provisioning of services is now limited to setting authorizations and routing rules at the “edge” of the VPN, and allowing the VPN to get packets from “edge” to “edge” to achieve overall QoS compliance
Superficially, this can be seen as a simplification of the network operations layer, but the reality is very different. Operators now need to design and configure their networks so that they can support the appropriate “overbooking” and service quality, manage the physical capacity to meet these demands, provision sophisticated multi-end-point customer services, map service quality metrics onto sophisticated customer services and manage a completely new family of network service identifiers. At the same time asset tracking and maintenance is more important as the volume, value and customer significance of equipment, deployed both in managed environments and remote field environments, increases.
Despite the high-technology core of IP VPN, most services are still delivered over an access network based on traditional and in some cases aging technologies. New technologies such as WiMAX and FTTx are being deployed in the access network to improve bandwidth, reach and reliability; and are bringing their own management challenges.
Our solution for IP VPN provides a comprehensive solution for:
- Network asset tracking and maintenance
- Product definition and order management for sophisticated, multi-component products
- Templated network modeling and capacity management for physical network components and mesh/cloud topologies
- Service provisioning; from the complex product orders to detailed and technical network activations, including template best practice workflows and task allocation
- Network assurance; identifying, isolating, restoring and resolving network availability issues
- Service assurance; from the technical service quality issues from the network to the customer SLA impacts, including sample SLAs
- Integrated solution for legacy access networks
- IP address management
