THE CHALLENGE
Telecom Operators are migrating from Legacy network infrastructures to more scalable, flexible and efficient Internet protocol (IP) networks, to support the new IP services, but mixed architectures TDM (dedicated to rural areas or international connections) and IP still coexist in the telecommunication world, becoming a strong barrier to Service Providers who need to monitor end to end connection.
Monitoring this high volume traffic is a must for the Operators: they need it for troubleshooting and also for granting the best user experience to their customers, but often in some cases old TDM tools are going out of production, so creating a lack of visibility for TDM networks.
So, while on one side Telecom Operators have the strong need to monitor the legacy networks, at least in the critical points, on the other side they are reluctant to invest in TDM tools, which are gradually phasing out and have high maintenance costs, preferring to monitor the whole infrastructure using IP monitoring tools.
THE SOLUTION
Microtel’s Ethernizer family products are the solution to this challenge, enabling operators to manage mixed infrastructures with the same IP probe, bringing all-locations and all-layers visible to the Centralized Monitoring System.
The solution allows to convert both TDM Signalling and Voice to IP, so giving a general solution capable to feed different types of IP probes, used for several purposes like troubleshooting, customer experience, performance management, security, …
Important to note, Ethernizer does not require any customization to the IP tool it interface with, since it uses standard SIGTRAN and RTP output protocols.
Ethernizer capabilities:
- It works with several type of links: E1, T1, STM-1
- It performs SS7 Signalling (MTP-2 or ATM) convertion to SIGTRAN (M2UA or M3UA)
- It performs ISDN E1/PRI (LAPD-Channel D) convertion to SIGTRAN (IUA)
- It performs VOICE (MTP-2) over STM-1 links convertion to RTP
- It performs L2GRE/NVGRE tunnel encapsulation/decapsulation, so allowing to backhaul converted IP traffic to geographically remote IP probes
Additionally, the connection to the TDM network is not a problem, since the Ethernizers have several possibilities for doing that, by using specific Microtel tools such as:
