What Problems Unique to WLANs Does Devicescape Wireless Operations Center Solve?
As a service support system and extensible platform specifically designed for monitoring and analyzing wireless networks (WLANs), Devicescape Wireless Operations Center solves those network management problems unique to wireless.
The Challenge
The Operations Center Solution
The Challenge
Wireless networks are dynamic and unpredictable by nature; topology is variable and clients are mobile. This creates many challenges for support, troubleshooting, and ongoing network management.
Wireless networks are also spatially sensitive in a way that conventional networks are not; the physical relations among devices are as important as the wiring and IP Address relationships.
Wireless network infrastructure is different than traditional "wired" (Ethernet) deployments. The network infrastructure has moved out of the wiring closet and pervades user territory. The large volume of Access Points and client devices, with rapidly evolving capacities, and fierce price competition, mean that any deployment will involve equipment from many different vendors with very different capabilities.
The Operations Center Solution
To meet these needs, Operations Center reflects design priorities that differentiate it from traditional network management systems:
Direct Movement through Time
Operations Center presents the network state as a freely scrollable recording; the user can simply drag a slider through time to watch the activity of the network over a period of minutes or days. Everything in the visual display, including calculated assessments of health and performance is time-sensitive. As a result, the two main activities of network analysis, real-time monitoring and historical log-file analysis, are the same task in Operations Center. With this unified capability, the most common support problems ("it worked yesterday, but not today: why not?") can be diagnosed effortlessly. (For more about using the Time Scanner, see Time Scanner.)
Powerful Focus Based on Your Search Criteria
Operations Center's visualization of network activity allows the user to specify many kinds of search criteria (such as particular users or client devices, services, or kinds of messages) and respects that choice throughout the display, and across the entire network. This makes tracking down problem reports from mobile, unpredictable wireless users efficient and thorough. (See Device Discovery Tools.)
Unified Model of Network Activity
In Operations Center, all data from network elements is reconciled into a compact, unified notation and permanently recorded. Fault reports and threshold traps, as well as routine changes to configuration and regular sampling of MIB attributes, are all captured in a single history stream. The resulting history stream includes the evolution of all the managed data and device activity from the network, so that (for example) particular client roaming patterns can be reconstructed across the homogenous network.
All devices, whether their reporting protocol is SNMP, or syslog, or proprietary, are treated identically within the repository. This enables system tools, as well as custom extensions, to be written concisely in a well-defined software development kit (SDK), independent of device, brand, and protocol issues.
Message-Driven Toolkit Architecture
Operations Center uses the design patterns of modern platform software throughout its components. The central repository is driven by updates and changes that emanate from the network devices, implemented using a message-based core. The user interface (UI), and all extension modules, are in turn clients of the repository, driven in the same way by its messages. This creates a proven environment for incremental development. New device handlers, data mining services, and display features can be added quickly with confidence.
The choice of Java as the implementation platform reflects this design choice. Its portability, strict modularity, memory safety, and rigorous exception handling allow rich extensibility without risking system integrity.
