Guy Matthews explores how network operation centres are evolving in an attempt to keep pace with the demands of rapidly changing networks.
Good network management and monitoring has always been crucial to the running of a carrier’s business, and the heart of any network management strategy is the network operation centre (NOC).
Traditionally, the NOC has had a fairly straightforward function. In the NOC of everybody’s imagination, a small team of people work in shifts to keep a watchful eye over a large bank of screens, with little to occupy them until an alarm of some sort signals a network outage.
However, we are rapidly entering a new era where mission critical services and applications are required to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, the function and importance of the NOC is changing fast.
“In the old days, operating backbone networks was a rigid and predictable business without much ever changing in terms of how networks were managed and how they behaved,” says John...