Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July 2010 Interoperability Challenges in ISPs Operations Tamer M. Kamel, Networks Operation & Maintenance Division, TE-DATA Egypt Manager Regional ITU Consultation on Conformance Assessment and Interoperability for the Africa region (Nairobi, Kenya, July 2010 )

Agenda TE Multi-Vendor Environment Interoperability Experience Recommendation Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July

TE Glance Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July

4 TE Data Market Market Leader as an internet provider and data communication solutions ~ 1 million home customers with 60% market share ~ 2000 enterprise customers with advanced solutions with 50% of Egypt market share ~ 100 Gbps of international bandwidth capacity with 70% of total internet capacity in Egypt

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July TE Data Services Basic Services ADSL Broadband WiFi Internet Internet Dial-up L2/L3 MPLS VPN Inter-AS VPN IP Transit

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July TE Data Services (Cont.) Value Added Services IPTV, VoD Clean Internet Video Conferencing Domain Names Virtual Call-Center for small business IP-Surveillance Virtual Branching Hosting Packages, Managed Data-center

Multi-Vendor Environment Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July

Multi-Vendor Environment Benefits Minimize Cost Reduce Risk Enrich Services Flexibility That Drives Innovation Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July

TE Data Multi-Vendor Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July Core Access Data Center

Interoperability Experience (Time Bomb) Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July LACP (IEEE 802.3ad) Failed to establish port bundle between DSLAM uplink (Vendor-A) and the access switch (Vendor-B) due to mismatch in LACP parameters. Impact: End customers experience instability Added operational cost and resources Loosing redundancy feature

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July MTU (RFC-1191) BRAS (Vendor-X) failed to establish subscriber sessions forwarded from MSAN (Vendor-Y); due to MTU mismatch Impact: Extra Configuration and customization Added operational cost and resources

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July SELT (ITU-T Study group 15) Couldn't perform copper line inspection by an application (Vendor- A) due to limited functionality of some DSLAM platform in SNMP and SELT test (Vendor-B) DSLAM Impact: No access to SELT services Difficulties in maintenance operations

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July xDSL (ITU G992.x) CPEs commit support of line-codes; while some are not functioning well Impact: Extra configuration needed Difficulties in maintenance operations

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July MAC Address (IEEE 802) many CPE brands use non-unique and fake MAC address during encapsulating PPP frame; causing duplicate MAC at DSLAM side and session may be dropped. Impact: Difficulties in maintenance operations Added cost to replace CPEs

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July SNMP ATM DSLAM (Vendor-X) not supporting the standard an complete MIB tree; causing poor discovery and management through the SNMP servers Impact: Hard to provision and to operate through management servers Added operational costs and resources

Recommendations Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July Recommendations Operators should share their experience and knowledge regarding interoperability through standard bodies. ITU and Standard Bodies should make a program to enhance operator skills regarding standards in technology.

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July Recommendations (cont.) Local and international standard bodies help in establishing and accrediting regional LABs. Monthly Bulletin by local countries NTRA with vendors problems and actions

Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July Recommendations (cont.) Hardware and software suppliers should mention the certificates of the products regarding the introduced features and its interoperability with other suppliers.

THANK YOU Nairobi, Kenya, 30 – 31 July