sonet 101

SONET OAM&P
TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT NETWORK (TMN) ARCHITECTURE
The architecture for OAM&P communications as defined by the International
Telecommunications Union, an agency of the United Nations, is shown in Figure
4-3. It provides a framework for an OS to communicate with the network and
vice versa. An OS is a sophisticated application software that manages the whole
network.
An OS can gather information from the network, as well as from alarm, status,
and performance statistics. It can also perform remote-circuit testing or networkadministration
tasks. An OS may also contain information on facilities available
for provisioning and may be used to provision by sending remote-control
commands to enable or disable circuits.
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The OS communicates with the network elements either directly or through
mediation devices. Mediation devices can support multiple functions such as
consolidation of communication links to the various network elements at the
same location, conversion of protocols back and forth, and management of
performance monitoring data.
The advantage of SONET is that the data communication channel can be used as
part of the Data Communications Network, as shown in the TMN’s architecture.