ABSTRACT: This document provides the Telcordia view of proposed generic requirements for the functions that support the management of traffic performance in a telecommunications network and for the interactions between those functions.

Planning, developing, and supporting operations functions in Network Elements (NEs) and management systems, and linking them together via well-defined interfaces, are critical steps to introducing new technologies and services into the network. As competition from multiple sources becomes more prevalent for network operators and service providers, timely and efficient management system support for new technologies and architectures and the services they enable will prove to be the differentiator and the key to survival.

The requirements in this document are based on the international and national standards for the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) architecture.

This document provides a detailed functional description of Traffic Performance Management based on TMN principles and the Management Application Functions (MAFs) defined in GR-2869-CORE. The Element Management Layer (EML) MAFs are assumed to be capable of interfacing with and managing an administrative domain of Network Elements (NEs) via management interfaces.

Traffic Performance Management receives and processes autonomous and/or scheduled reports of traffic performance as well as congestion and overload notifications from NEs and provides critical analysis, control, and storage of traffic performance monitoring data for the traffic carrying entities. This enables unnecessary or redundant data from the NEs to be filtered out and traffic performance of NEs and service instances to be measured. Congested and overloaded entities are recognized and the appropriate controls are applied to maintain the integrity of the network.

Traffic Performance Management, described in this document, is intended to be applicable to networking technologies in general, independent of the underlying protocol. While specific examples are provided concerning TDM circuit switching, ATM, and IP technologies, the concepts and functional descriptions are not limited to these technologies.