HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN OVERCOME EMERGENCY SERVICE CHALLENGES
EFFECTIVELY MONITORING DISPARATE NETWORKS
Sean Newman, director and principal consultant, Kalibre and Matthew Bertram, business consultant, Micro Focus
Modern applications can be used to bring together fault and performance data into a 'single-pane-of-glass' view of the overall network.
M
ore than ever before, public safety network providers depend on technology that provides visibility into their network to ensure they can support mission-critical communications. We have seen in the last few years the additional pressure that natural disasters such as bushfires and extreme weather events can place on these networks. Telecommunications outages can severely impact the critical communication required to coordinate resources and keep emergency services personnel safe.
A modern public safety communications network is incredibly complex and diverse, with a broad range of devices that need to be monitored alongside the radio network itself. This can include DC power systems, generators, batteries, air conditioners, microwave and other backhaul transmission equipment, plus now even cameras that provide security monitoring at remote locations. To provide radio coverage where emergency services need it, service providers often need to build towers in remote and difficult-to-reach locations. These remote locations, coupled with the severe weather conditions faced there, can place additional strain on power supply and air-conditioning systems, impacting on the ability for these systems to continue functioning. On top of this complexity, service providers are being asked to meet increasingly stringent and rigorous service levels from state and federal government customers
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that demand high levels of network availability and performance. These service levels are backed by mandatory monitoring, measurement and reporting requirements to demonstrate compliance. Against this backdrop, service providers face challenges in being able to effectively monitor these disparate network elements. Traditionally, the various devices and technologies are monitored with multiple discrete monitoring systems, resulting in a proliferation of screens and applications within the network operations centre (NOC). Couple this with the tendency for network devices to generate high volumes of alarms and the result is the NOC struggling to stay across the faults occurring within their networks. Fault diagnosis becomes very time-consuming, often requiring NOC operators and engineers to manually sift through an overwhelming volume of fault information to try and find the root cause.
www.CriticalComms.com.au
