I used to work in the Advanced Software Engineering group in Nortel Networks during the early '90s. We applied different software techniques to different problems to see which were most effective and then turned them into products for the company. We solved these problems over 25 years ago.
We applied the Constraint Based Handling software technique to equipment configuration and created an application that Nortel used this for all its hardware products. We would produce a near-optimal configuration with seconds rather than an engineer taking hours and Nortel used it throughout its product lines by its product and field engineers.
We took this a step(s) further and created a resource-based configuration language that would take a given product and produce the required network configuration to support that product; and vice-versa - given a network of equipment, what services could be supported. This allowed us to then cope with network failures and automatically re-configure products on the fly, e.g. a router goes down and its replacement doesn't have the exact capability so the service is impacted. Resources could be logical, software, hardware etc. Again, we had this in production in Nortel for its networks.
Interestingly, we applied Neural Networks to analyse faults and found they weren't as good as humans looking at fault streams and understanding what the root cause/problem was. This was because although NNs are good at pattern analysis, they weren't good at spotting interwoven patterns but humans were.
Much of this is still around online.
Dave
------------------------------
David Riches
TM Forum
Handyman
+44 774 811 8071
driches@tmforum.org------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: Feb 03, 2021 11:34
From: Paul Jordan
Subject: YANG like model for physical equipment onboarding
Saravana, thank you for your interest. Some years ago I noted that tools being proposed to describe the hierarchy of software capabilities and requirements could equally well be used to describe the hierarchy of equipment in things like modular routers. Eg. A port is provided on a card but a card needs a slot, a slot is provided by a chassis, a chassis needs a control card etc.
Typically this information is supplied in spec sheets but if it were machine readable then there is scope for automatically making recommending the optimal collection of equipment to use when increasing the port capacity at a particular location. No doubt there other advantages as well.
At the time I tried to specify a syntax for this based on YANG as that language was already being introduced to describe the software capabilities of the equipment. Also I choose to use IETF YANG definitions which turned out not to be the preferred flavour.
BT made approaches to three of the major router vendors, there needs to be something in it for them too - I would have thought build validation would be easier, but the reaction was only lukewarm. Of course, there is still the option of a CSP transcribing datasheets into machine readable format for their own internal use.
The YANG definition I created at the time is at GitHub - pmjordan/wayang: Proposed format for machine readable data normally found in data sheets of hardware
but I'm afraid I no longer have the example router description which conformed to that definition.
I think TOSCA could be used in the same way should that syntax prove to be more acceptable and I do have an example of that. Please contact me directly if you would like to see that or discuss further.
------------------------------
Paul Jordan
BT Group plc
Original Message:
Sent: Feb 02, 2021 19:15
From: Saravana Chockalingam
Subject: YANG like model for physical equipment onboarding
Hi,
Looking for an example of a YANG model for physical equipment as described in this catalyst: https://inform.tmforum.org/catalyst/2018/05/catalyst-aims-simplify-onboarding-physical-network-gear/
If an example can be shared that help, as I am trying to understand what this would look like.
Thanks.
#OpenDigitalArchitecture
------------------------------
Saravana Chockalingam
Telstra Corporation
------------------------------