Telemar Monitors SS7 Signals Using RAD’s DXC

In a world driven by customer demand for Quality of Service (QoS) at a competitive price, delivering real-time information to network management systems is an essential element in every carrier network, in order to detect problems before they affect customer service.

Telemar, a leading fixed wireline telephone service provider in Brazil, is employing RAD’s DXC multiservice access node as a cost-effective method of centralizing network management and reducing traffic monitoring costs. “Instead of using costly protocol analyzers to monitor the SS7 signaling, we manage the network in a simpler and safer way,” says Jose Henrique Zibelberg, Telemar’s network manager. “Protocol analyzers would require a separate link from each E1 line to the network management station. But the DXC requires only one link for 31 E1 lines to transfer the signaling data to the central management station,” he adds.

In the Telemar network, a passive T-sampler connected to each E1 voice channel duplicates the traffic and sends it to the DXC. The DXC extracts the signaling information (timeslot 16) from each voice channel and grooms all the timeslots onto one output E1 line, which is sent to the network management station at the central office for analysis. Data from these timeslots indicate the quality of the connection and can also detect network faults. The lines that connect the DXC to the T-sampler are configured as unidirectional, so as not to interfere with the voice traffic passing on the line.

Telemar employs the 2-port E1 module in the 3U high DXC-30 chassis to pack 29 timeslots onto an E1 line. The new, high density 8-port module enables grooming 58 input E1 lines (or 116 timeslots) onto four output E1 links. The 1U high, costeffective DXC-8R unit can pack 31 signaling timeslots onto a full E1, and the 1U high DXC-10A unit packs 39 signaling timeslots onto one full and one Fractional E1 line. With the new DXC-STM-1add-drop multiplexer and 1/0 cross connect unit, it is possible to transmit 114 timeslots from 114 input E1 lines directly over an SDH backbone.

As telephone calls increasingly span the networks of more than one carrier, SS7 monitoring is being implemented to perform such services as interconnection billing. Additional business applications provided by SS7 monitoring include network surveillance, data acquisition, fraud, statistics and custom applications. It also furnishes important marketing data, such as customer calling habits at different locations. The DXC can monitor other signaling protocols in addition to SS7.