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Table Of Contents
Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager
Cisco MWC Performance Mediator
Devices Supported in Cisco MWC Version 2.0
Data Sheet
Cisco Mobile Wireless Center Version 2.0
Product Overview
The Cisco® Mobile Wireless Center (MWC) is a ready-to-deploy, automated, and pre-integrated intelligent network management system (NMS) offering that provides mobile operators with carrier-grade network management support for the mobile wireless domain, including 2.5G, 2.75G, and 3G technologies.
Cisco MWC supports Cisco mobility and wireless networking solutions. In particular, Cisco MWC delivers a complete network management solution for Cisco Mobile Exchange, which includes mobile services and packet gateways.
Cisco MWC Version 2.0 provides device configuration, network services provisioning, fault mediation, and performance mediation for Cisco Service Selection Gateways (SSGs), Content Services Gateways (CSGs), Packet Data Serving Nodes and Home Agents (PDSNs/HAs), and Gateway GPRS Support Nodes (GGSNs) on the Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series or Cisco 7600 Series Multiprocessor WAN Application Module (MWAM) and Cisco 7200 Series platforms.
Figure 1 illustrates the Cisco Mobile Exchange framework and Cisco MWC.
Figure 1
Cisco Mobile Exchange Framework and Cisco Mobile Wireless Center
Benefits to Mobile Operators
Cisco MWC Version 2.0 provides the following benefits for mobile service providers:
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Intelligent domain-level management, including provisioning, fault, and performance mediation applications bundled together that can be run on a single server
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Cisco MWC is deployable in conjunction with CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution (LMS) and CiscoWorks Routed WAN management Solution (RWAN). It provides a complete network management solution that addresses the most common network administration, device configuration, service provisioning, and ongoing operations support tasks, allowing the entire Cisco Mobile Exchange framework to be managed as though it was a single box.
As a result, mobile operators can achieve significant operating expense savings through reduced time to deploy new services, reduced errors, and reduced training of network operators.
With Cisco MWC, users can:
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Cisco MWC provides a simple, mobile-wireless-oriented, service-level interface to partner and customer operations support system (OSS) applications that enables rapid insertion of leading Cisco Mobile Exchange technologies and capabilities into the mobile wireless network.
Product Details
The three major functional components of Cisco MWC are the Provisioning Manager, the Fault Mediator, and the Performance Mediator. Figure 2 illustrates the system architecture and northbound interfaces.
Figure 2
Mobile Wireless Center System Architecture
Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager
The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager enables automated device and device grouping configuration features based on simple, powerful configuration abstractions and interfaces that enable customers to rapidly deploy even the most complex of IP-based services. The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager allows users to define customer-specified groups (clusters) of network elements and servers that can be administered as a group (to set up common operators' authorization privileges, for example). The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager maintains an active inventory of configured devices and provides an easy way to create and update configurations and activate services across multiple Cisco Mobile Exchange network elements. A Web-based user interface allows the user to view, create, modify, and search the specific configuration data and associated network contents to help ensure a single-point configuration interface for each specific Cisco Mobile Exchange domain, such as a cluster of Cisco PDSN/HA devices.
Network Administrative Configuration
The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager provides customizable grouping to group network elements with predefined network attributes and to apply operations of groups of objects instead of individual objects.
User Activity Log
The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager provides a log of all user activities that is useful in network troubleshooting.
Template-Based Provisioning
The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager uses a template-based tool that supports initial device-level configuration, ad-hoc configuration changes, and domain-level cluster creation, initialization, and modification, including load-balancing components, VLAN configuration, redundant pairs, and cluster membership definitions and configuration. It can also be used for profile-based service activation for a Cisco Mobile Exchange device for specific architecture and service scenarios, such as CSG prepaid or PDSN data monitoring. Since both profiles and templates are implemented according to a data-driven design, users can easily create, modify, or delete provisioned services or device configurations.
Configuration Versioning
The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager supports domainwide device versioning with a configuration file history, including the latest working configuration.
Device Cluster Management
The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager supports all Cisco Mobile Exchange clustering schemes for both mobile services and packet gateway elements, including:
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Browser-Based GUI
The Cisco MWC Provisioning Manager provides a Web-based GUI that allows the user to launch the application in client mode via the Internet. This interface can be used to view, create, modify, and search stored configuration data and associate network contents, helping to ensure a single-point configuration interface.
Cisco MWC Fault Mediator
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator provides advanced alarm filtering, deduplication, and correlation for all Cisco Mobile Exchange framework devices. It also supports the Cisco Access Registrar—Cisco's RADIUS-based authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server.
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator uses complex algorithms to more effectively manage change monitoring. Processed fault data can be forwarded to northbound systems such as Cisco Info Center, HP OpenView, or Manager of Managers (MoM).
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator provides full thresholding, in addition to what is provided within Cisco IOS® Software. Fully customizable, overlapping thresholds and several severity levels can be defined.
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator can display fault data in real time or store historical data (for up to seven days in case of severe alarms). It supports the delivery of events in the form of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps to the NMS. In addition, the MoM may request events over the reliable data bus through Java requests.
Robust Trap Transport Mechanism (RTM)
To help ensure that no alarms are lost during the SNMP communication with the MoM, the Cisco MWC Fault Mediator provides an RTM mechanism that uniquely and sequentially identifies each outgoing trap. If the MoM misses a trap, it can request retransmission of the information via the Java API.
Discovery and Topology
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator includes a discovery engine that automatically finds all Cisco Mobile Exchange nodes, along with neighboring Cisco Catalyst switches and service components attached to the IP network, capturing not only what is present, but also the port-to-port connectivity between devices on the network. This information is stored in a database that allows rapid storage, retrieval, and updating of data concerning connectivity between devices.
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator consistently provides an accurate map of the network. Even as the network changes, ongoing passive discovery detects when new Cisco mobile wireless devices are added and triggers a partial rediscovery of that portion of the network.
Policy-Based Management
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator uses a policy-based expert system, where all aspects of the network are controlled and administered from a single point. This approach relies on active object classes (AOCs) to monitor network elements and define polling requirements. AOCs describe how to identify devices, determine connectivity, and monitor the devices for problems.
The Cisco MWC Fault Mediator can perform aggregated polling, which consolidates polling requests for multiple applications, minimizing the unnecessary use of network and device bandwidth. To further minimize unnecessary polling, the Cisco MWC Fault Mediator uses caching technology to store the most recent device information. Standard polling methods include ping and SNMP. Cisco MWC Fault Mediator monitoring also accepts SNMP traps and reads device syslog files.
Cisco MWC Performance Mediator
The Cisco MWC Performance Mediator simplifies the collection, aggregation, and northbound forwarding of performance and usage data coming from numerous Cisco element types and data sources (in particular, Cisco Mobile Exchange network elements). It offers local processing and correlation of performance metrics for particular services and application domains, increasing the manageability of those services.
The collection and delivery mechanisms are dynamic and can be easily modified to include a variety of tasks such as scheduled data collection and delivery to hotspot polling for debugging and threshold event notification with both raise and clear alarm criteria. Configuration and modification can be accomplished through either a Web-based interface or through the use of a data bus. Delivery can be made by FTP or data bus subscription. In the case of events, SNMP traps are also supported.
The Cisco MWC Performance Mediator provides an open publish-and-subscribe Extensible Markup Language (XML) interface through its use of the Cisco CNS Integration Bus for easy integration into existing service provider OSSs and third-party performance and service-level agreement (SLA) management applications. This enables third-party performance management software vendor partners to rapidly integrate performance and service assurance statistics relevant to particular Cisco domains, such as 3G and 4G, into their business operations or product offerings.
Devices Supported in Cisco MWC Version 2.0
Table 1 Devices Supported in Cisco MWC Version 2.0
72001
7600 or Catalyst 6500 series MWAM
72001
7600 or Catalyst 6500 series MWAM
7600 or Catalyst 6500 series MWAM
CSG
7600 or Catalyst 6500 series Supervisor Engine 2
1 The Cisco 7200 Series platform is supported in the Cisco MWC Fault Mediator and Cisco MWC Performance Mediator only.
Northbound Protocols Supported in Cisco MWC Version 2.0
Cisco MWC is built from an open standards-based architecture and provides different standards-based northbound protocols for integration with northbound OSSs (Table 2).
MIB Instrumentation
Cisco MWC Version 2.0 supports all of the Cisco Mobile Exchange MIBs in the areas of fault and performance mediation as appropriate (Table 3).
Minimum System Requirements
For proper system performance, the following minimum system specifications are required:
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Compatibility with CiscoWorks
Cisco MWC Version 2.0 is fully compatible with CiscoWorks LMS and RWAN Solaris-based bundles and can coexist on the same hardware platform.
For more information on CiscoWorks LMS and RWAN bundles, visit:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/cscowork/ps2426/index.html
For more information on Cisco MWC, visit:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/netmgtsw/ps820/index.html
