Network Management for Open Systems Connected Through ISDN

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is a concept to integrate various kinds of telecommunication networks and services into a single network. The set of services to be integrated into ISDN includes telephony as well as the services traditionally used by communicating data applications. Once ISDN will be available, data communication applications may use ISDN bearer services instead of the transmission media currently used (e.g. leased lines or virtual circuits through a packet switched network).In this paper, it is studied how open systems (in the sense of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model) can communicate through ISDN connections. Open systems can only communicate using ISDN connections if they conform to the ISDN architecture. ISDN uses separate channels for signalling flows and for the exchange of data units between end users. The signalling processes specific to ISDN and the processes related to the communication on the user channel must be synchronized, for example, for connection establishment or release and when an application wants to use ISDN specific services that involve signalling procedures.If ISDN connections are part of a heterogeneous communication network, they must be integrated into the global network management concepts. It must be possible to perform network management operations for ISDN resources and to obtain network management information from ISDN resources similarly as for other types of resources in the network.The guideline for managing open systems is the OSI management framework. In this paper, the OSI network management concepts are outlined and the application of these concepts to open systems communicating through ISDN is illustrated. OSI network management concepts are applied to ISDN by identifying the managed objects specific to ISDN, their attributes, relationships, management operations and defined events.