Telecoms Service Assurance & Service Fulfillment with Neo4j Graph Database

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Telecoms Service Assurance &
Service Fulfilment with Neo4j
Graph Database
Álvaro Oslé,
Director of Global Architecture

2. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Blueplanet: Network Software Automation
• The need for creating models for Telecommunication networks
• A sample Telco network data model. Why graphs are a good fit?
• The power of graph in Service Assurance and Service Fulfilment use-cases
• Bandwidth/Capacity availability
• Path Computation
• Service Impact Analysis
• Alarm Correlation & Root Cause
• Q & A
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3
Blueplanet Software Network
Automation

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4
Blueplanet and the core business processes for CSPs
Creation of the
service ready
network that is
able to support
new services.
Including physical,
logical & virtual
Taking the customer
request and
converting it into
service via the
network, resources
and applications
Proactive
monitoring of the
service to handle
events and faults
and restore
services to normal
state
Plan to
Build
Order to
Service
Trouble to
Resolve
Ciena Blueplanet provides a
software and solutions portfolio
aiming to automate these core
business processes for
Communication Service Providers
for all type of network domains and
on multi-vendor networks.

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Blueplanet Portfolio
Carrier-Grade – Open – Programmable
Key components to execute on the vision of closed-loop automation
Multi-Domain Inventory,
Topology & Visualization
Orchestration Engine
Assurance, Analytics
& Policy Management
SOO

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The need for creating models for
Telecommunication networks

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An abstract copy of the live hardware, physical
and logical connectivity is required. But why?
• Capacity planning
• Service impact analysis
• Network routing (Path compute)
• Feasibility checking before receipt of a service
order
• Fault Correlation and Root Cause Analysis
• Manage network resources state transitions
…on multi-domain and multi-vendor networks…
The need of telco network models

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Show me where my network
capacity is running out
So that I can plan network
investments
Show me the connections,
services and customers that are
using this SFP
So that I don’t pull the plug on an
important customer during a
planned upgrade
Store all the planned service
demands at a location
So I can decide whether to support
another quote at that location
Do I have Ethernet 10G Capacity
between A and B?
So I can check whether I can fulfil
an order from a customer
Model and track the entire service
hierarchy (active and passive)
So I can use the data to support root
cause analysis and Service Impact
Planning a telco network needs answers…

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I want to have warning of network
events before they happen
To avoid outages
I want to raise enriched tickets as
quickly as possible
To accelerate problem resolution
I want to focus on the most
important network issues
To best utilize limited NOC
resources
I want to automate my network
operations
To respond more quickly to network
problems with less effort
I want to improve network
performance
To reduce SLA pay-outs and
improve customer satisfaction
Managing a telco network needs answers…

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A sample Telco network data model.
Why graphs are a good fit?

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A sample Telco network data model.
Customer
Service
Location
Logical
Connection
Rack Equipment
Shelf Slot Card Pluggable
Physical
Port
Physical
Connection
Logical
Interface
HAS
HAS
IS_ROUTED_OVER
TERMINATES_ON
IS_ROUTED_OVER
TERMINATES_ON HAS
HAS
HAS HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
HAS
TERMINATES_ON
Isn’t this a “graph”?
Network data is
nodes and
relationships

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An example of an optical channel circuit in neo4j

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Telecommunication networks. Why graphs are a good fit?
1 2
Flexible Schema. Model
can be extended easily
with new entities and
relationships on the
graph.
Store the relationships
as part of the data
record.
3 4
Provide query languages that
assume data is related and
that the relationships form
part of the query, e.g.
Cypher.
Traversals are FAST and
many of the queries that
we do to telco networks
require traversal queries.

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The power of graph in Service
Assurance and Service Fulfilment
use-cases

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Finding for free ports on all device a telco hub site
in order to fulfil new customer requests is a typical
use-case for service fulfilment.
The query has to traverse many levels to go from
the site all he way to the ports. Cypher expression
is very compact and avoids many complex table
joints required in relational databases.
Due to write ACID transaction support in neo4j the
desired port(s) can be allocated to the customer
service order.
Available capacity can also be applied at many
other levels, e.g. support rack space availability for
new equipment, slot availability for card module
installation in equipment, available fiber strands on
a cable, etc.
Available Capacity calculation
match p=(port:PhysicalPort)<-
[:HAS*2..9]-(a:Device) <--
(l:Location)
where l.name='DLLSTXNO'
and not (port)<-
[:HAS_CONNECTION_COMPONENT]-()
return count(port), a.name

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Find available bandwidth between two
points two points on the network to fulfil a
customer order.
Ability to support geographically diverse
routes with no single point of failure.
Once path resources are allocated to the
service request, activate the configurations
on to the network.
Path Computation

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Understand the Services being affected as
a result of a critical alarm on a network
equipment or a planned outage.
How can I quickly establish the services,
customers being affected and any SLA
violations after a cable breakage?
Assurance: Service Impact
match p=(s:Service)-[*..8]->
(port:PhysicalPort)<-
[:HAS*2..9]- (a:Device) where
a.name="MX2020_DLLSTXNOMAH_04000
4.04_04“ Return p

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NOC engineers receive thousands of
alarms from the network.
Major and critical alarms on some parts of
a multi-domain and multi-vendor network
creates other alarms on other parts of the
network.
Inventory topology and alarm correlation
rules are critical to detect root cause
(parent alarms) and reduce noise and
time for restoring the network to optimal
state.
Assurance: Alarm Correlation

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Telco network data powered by Graph at Blueplanet
• Understand impact of faults or planned changes via traversal.
• Alarm Correlation and application of policies to find Root Cause alarms.
• Model effectively capacity, consumption and utilization and plan/design network changes.
• Design and assign network resources to customers and services.
• Solve routing problems quickly with optimized graph traversal algorithms.
• Visualize the network data in different perspectives through time (planned view, live view).
• Explore relationships between the data elements that were previously too onerous to explore due
to distances between data points.
• Analytics and Pattern analysis
Schema Flexibility allows us to:
• Easily add to the model, relationships which were not envisaged at design time
• Quickly turn Entity/Relationship diagrams into actual data to validate our ideas
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Q&A

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Thank you!
Contact us at
sales@neo4j.com