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Managed Leased Line Network

With the burgeoning need for the leased line, managed leasedline networks (MLLNs) are being adopted and preferred by

several businesses for fulfilling their telecommunication needs.Let us go through the technology of MLLNs, their advantages,usage, basic configuration, working, equipment involved, etc

Dr Rajiv Kumar Singh

In the present age of globalisation, businesses are spread all around the world. In orderto operate the business smoothly, there is a strong need for a dedicated telecom linkthat can connect geographically spread out locations of several businesses. The telecom

facility may be either shared such as dial-up lines or non-shared such as leased lines andmanaged leased line networks (MLLNs). Obviously, businesses prefer a highly secureddedicated non-shared communication facility that is available all the time.

Fig. 1: A typical MLLN set-up

A leased line is a dedicated link or telecommunication path provided between two fixed

locations, which is made available round the clock for use by the designated user (anindividual or a company). Leased lines are provided to users for internal communicationbetween their different business centres/offices/factories at various locations within acity or different cities on a point-to-point basis or on a network basis.

These leased lines can carry voice, data and video and can be used for connectingtelephone sets, computers, electronic private automatic branch exchange (EPABX) andfor establishing a virtual private network (VPN). These lines are exclusive for the

designated user and are particularly not shared in common amongst multiple users asdial-up lines.

Such ordinary leased lines are not very efficient and have lots of disadvantages such aslimited range of services, bandwidth support only up to 64kbps (2.4kbps, 4.8kbps,9.6kbps and 64kbps), no support for n64kbps bandwidth provisioning, cumbersomeoperation and vendor-specific equipment.

Other disadvantages are first-generation network elements with minimal maintenance

features, difficult fault isolation and rectification, no centralised alarm or performancestatistics monitoring, no health diagnostics for the network, high lead time for newcircuit installation, manual verification of resources needed, cross-connection of

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individual circuits done at the channel level, poor customer satisfaction, no proactivemaintenance, high mean time to repair (MTTR), no guaranteed quality of service (QoS),no way to measure circuit quality or generate customised performance reports, poornetwork reliability and availability, non-redundant network elements, no alternaterouting of circuits in case of failure and no centralised network management system(NMS).

Applications of MLLNManaged leased line network (MLLN) is a system that can provide leased lineconnectivity, that is, a dedicated telecommunication path between two fixed points. It is

an integrated, fully managed, multi-service digital network platform through which aservice provider can offer a wide range of services at an optimal cost to businesssubscribers. MLLN allows the service provider to keep an end-to-end control and monitor

over the leased line and hence provide guarantees of uptime of the circuit.

With the use of managed leased line circuits by various sectors such as banking andfinancial institutions, stock markets, news and print media industry, broadcasting housesand Internet service providers (ISPs), people of all the sections are benefitted by way of

accessibility of bank accounts from anywhere, instant news coverage, faster Internetaccess, etc.

The applications/services offered by MLLN are:1. Speech circuits (hot line or P-wire).Dedicated telecom links for speech, say, hotline for voices between two different locations is established by local or long-distance

circuits within a city or between two different cities. The terminating equipment at bothends is telephone set without dialling facility. In such a connection, both-way signallingand speech is possible.

2. Data circuits.Dedicated local or long-distance point-to-point or point-to-multipointdata circuits at different speeds, namely, n64kbps and up to 2Mbps can be offered for

different bandwidth needs of the customer. MLLN offers flexibility of providing leasedcircuits with speeds of n64kbps and up to 2Mbps with differential time-dependentbandwidth provisioning.

3. Private data network.More than one local or long-distance leased circuits can beprovided such that data from one leased circuit can be transferred automatically toanother leased circuit for the same subscriber.

4. International leased circuits.International long-distance leased circuits can beoffered for business across the globe, which are useful for Internet leased lines andinternational private leased circuits (IPLCs).

The MLLN also supports enhanced features such as corporate hi-speed Internet access,EPABX interconnection, EPABX remote extension (EPABX of one city can be connected toEPABX of another city), ISDN (integrated services digital network) line extension, virtual

private network (VPN), local area network (LAN) interconnection (LAN of one city can beconnected to LAN of another city) and extension of VPN to customer through MLLN. Atypical MLLN system connecting various facilities of a customer is shown in Fig. 1.

Salient features of MLLNThe MLLN service is specially designed for having effective control and monitoring on the

leased line so that the downtime is minimised and the circuit efficiency is increased.

MLLN mainly deals with data circuits ranging from 64kbps to 2048kbps (n64kbps). Oneof the major attractions of MLLN is its ability to provide differential time-dependent

bandwidth on demand basis to the customers. For example, it is possible to provision

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1024kbps MLLN circuit for 16 hours a day and 512kbps for remaining 8 hours of the day,as per the requirement of the customer.

Another great thing about MLLN is its very efficient NMS that can proactively maintainthe circuit without waiting for customers to book a complaint. NMS provides featuressuch as bandwidth management, alternate or back-up transmission routing, powerful

diagnostics and maintenance tools and self-repair tools.

Fig. 2: MLLN architecture

MLLN-NMS also provides periodic performance report which is useful in providing high-speed leased lines with improved QoS, high availability and reliability to the business and

good service to existing customers.

The network management system also supports service provisioning, networkoptimisation and planning and service monitoring. The system offers features such as

end-to-end circuit creation and monitoring, software loop test to check connectivity ofvarious network elements and fault isolation and software programmability of customerend equipment.

MLLNs offer great amount of security because media is not shared and is exclusivelydedicated for a particular subscriber. With MLLN, lead time is very low for provisioning ofa new leased line. Its modular system and new application can be implemented very fastby simply adding or plugging the units.

MLLN architecture

MLLN network is a three-tier structure and comprises network elements such as digitalcross connects (DXC), versatile multiplexer (VMUX), network termination units (NTU)

and NMS (Fig. 2).

Stage 1 comprises NMS, regional DXC (RDXC) and/or sub-regional DXC (SRDXC), billingservers, database servers, etc. At this stage, all the network management functions aredone from the central location. This stage provides connectivity to second-stage nodes

and provides traffic aggregation.

Second stage comprises SRDXC, SSDXC (secondary switching DXC) and VMUX, and islocated in major cities where demand for leased line is high. This stage provides

connectivity to third stage and performs leased line traffic aggregation.

Third stage comprises VMUX and NTU and is located in small cities/towns where leased

line demand is lower (approximately 20). This stage provides leased line trafficaggregation.

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The media for interconnecting various network elements and extending line up tocustomer end may be optical fibre, copper wire, radio, microwave transmission or acombination of these.

MLLN has to provide high reliability service and is supposed to obtain efficiency greaterthat 99.5 per cent. Therefore all the interconnections of different network elements are

provided as rings, wherever available, so that an alternate circuit path can beautomatically used for routing the traffic in case of main route failure. In long-distancenetwork, links between the same stations can be split into alternate physical path ofrings to the extent feasible. This also saves on-port capacity required for providing

alternate path within MLLN.

With these network elements, the MLLN is able to provide functions such as fault,

configuration, accounting, performance and security management.

Network management system (NMS).It is built on open architecture and relational

database system and manages all the network elements and their functions centrally. It

is able to configure, provision, manage and monitor all aspects and parameters of theremote elements of the MLLN network centrally without the need of any localintervention.

On-demand bandwidth configuration is performed at NMS and priority can also be set fora particular leased line. This enables the high-priority customer lines to be routed first to

the standby route in case of failure of the main route.

Any change of configuration of any network element is auto-recognised by the NMS.NMS is also capable of re-initialisation of the network element in the event of

software/hardware failure. A predefined routing schedule is used by NMS to perform fastre-establishment of circuits within the network across alternative paths totally

automatically, in the event of failure.

A detailed fault report is generated in order to identify the exact problem so thatimmediate corrective measures can be taken in order to restore the services.

The fault information provided by NMS contains type of faulty network element, the timeat which fault occurred, time when it corrected, etc. The NMS keeps polling all thenetwork elements after some predetermined interval and generates alarms so that

proactive measures can be taken.

Digital cross connect (DXC).It is a large-capacity cross-connect device that separateschannels coming from other devices and rearranges them into new channels for output.

A digital cross-connection allows lower-level time division multiplexing (TDM) bit streamsto be rearranged and interconnected amongst higher-level TDM signals. The signal isfirst de-multiplexed into a lower level after which it is cross-connected and thenmultiplexed again.

Versatile multiplexer (VMUX).It is a small capacity cross connect device with severalchannel interfaces which is installed at different sites for providing user connectivity.

VMUX multiplexes all tributaries coming from other devices and forms a higher hierarchylevel output at the specified port. The VMUX is provided with different types of interfacesto connect SDSL and HDSL product family modems. The number of interfaces (such as64/128kbps, n x 64kbps, E1 or hotline) depends on the type of VMUX configuration

(VMUX type I, VMUX type II, VMUX type III/DC operation and VMUX type III ACoperation).

Network terminating unit (NTU).It is simply a base band modem and which is

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located at the customers premises. The NTU works on normal AC supply. NTUs of

various capacities (64/128kbps and n64kbps) are available with several interfaces(V.35, G.703, Ethernet). NTU also allows for the use of existing telecom copper cables(twisted pair) for digital traffic with medium distances (~5 km) and high speeds.

Conclusion

In the changing economic environment, dependence of organisational and industrialactivities on leased circuits is increasing. In such a scenario, high QoS, high efficiency,highly secured network, customer-oriented tariffs along with desired bandwidth, time-dependent bandwidth provisioning, no congestion, centralised control and monitoring,

lower lead time for new installations and proactive fault maintenance prove MLLN to be acommercial boon for corporate and individual customers.

The author is working with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. He holds a Ph.D. degree in

electronics engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi. His current

research interests include wired and wireless technologies for high-speed Internet

access