Optical Networking Best Practices Handbook

12.1. OPTICAL NETWORKING CONFIGURATION FLOW-THROUGH PROVISIONING

The objective of flow-through provisioning is to automate the optical networking configuration-provisioning process to provide quick, error-free, and cost-effective solutions to service providers. Flow-through provisioning is based on the TMN model (see Fig. 12.1) [1] that abstracts management into different levels of hierarchy such as:

• Business management layer (BML)

• Service management layer (SML)

• Network management layer (NML)

  Figure 12.1. Flow-through provisioning in the TMN model.

  

• Element management layer (EML)

• Network element layer (NEL) [1]

During service provisioning, the abstract provisioning commands are fed in the BML and the request flows through the successive lower layers of the network element, as specific provisioning commands. Each lower layer reports the results of the optical networking configuration-provisioning operation to the higher layer. The BML now gets the overall result of the optical networking configuration-provisioning operation as shown in Figure 12.1 [1].

In Figure 12.1, provisioning commands that flow from the business-oriented top layers to the technical-oriented bottom layers and responses are shown as solid arrows [1]. Thus, the abstract provisioning commands fed at the business layer flow down to more specific provisioning commands at bottom layers. The response for these provisioning ...