System components

Overview

The NSP architecture accommodates a wide variety of network management functions and interworking capabilities. In addition to the core system elements, an NSP deployment may include ancillary devices or appliances, other products, and multiple interfaces to in-house or third-party systems. For example, the NFM-P, NSP analytics servers, and the WS-NOC product can be included in an NSP system that forwards statistics and other data to various types of OSS clients. See the NSP System Architecture Guide for details.

The purchased feature packages, selected installation options, and operator privilege levels determine which elements are available to network operators.

Table 1-1: NSP system component overview

Component

Description

Common nspOS components

The following components make up the base NSP platform:

  • Login—grants SSO access to NSP, GUI clients, and other resources

  • Entry point for NSP: Network Map and Health on shared-mode NSP deployments

  • Central Authentication Server, or CAS—authenticates user login attempts

  • Session Manager—tracks and manages SSO sessions

  • REST API Gateway—acquires NSP REST API tokens and locates specific NSP APIs

  • NSP PKI Server—generates TLS certificates for system-wide NSP deployment

VSR-NRC

The Virtual Service Router - Network Resources Controller (VSR-NRC) acts in a Virtual Network Function (VNF) capacity to perform topology discovery. The VSR-NRC is based on the SROS software, and implements the southbound protocols of NSP's path control function, which consist of the Path Computation Element (PCE) function, with PCEP, BGP-LS and IGP protocols, and the OpenFlow Controller (OFC).

NFM-P

The NFM-P is a network management system that functions as an NSP component. It simplifies routine operations and allows the bulk provisioning of network objects. The system is designed using industry standards such as Java, XML/SOAP, REST, and WebDAV. The NFM-P uses open-standard interfaces that allow the system to interoperate with a variety of other network monitoring and management systems.

WS-NOC

The WaveSuite Network Operations Center (WS-NOC) is a standalone optical network management product that can also function as an NSP component. The WS-NOC provides end-to-end optical management functions that include service provisioning over multi-technology optical transport networks such as SDH/SONET, carrier Ethernet, WDM, ROADM, OTN, and packet. Browser-based fault management applications reduce the time and cost of network and service assurance operations, and an API enables OSS integration.

For more information about the WS-NOC, see the WS-NOC Getting Started Guide.

NSP Flow Collectors and Flow Collector Controllers

An NSP Flow Collector is an optional, scalable component that collects AA Cflowd or System Cflowd statistics directly from NEs and forwards the statistics records to one or more remote target servers, or to an NFM-P database, after which they are available for processing by third-party tools or by NSP functions such as Analytics Reports.

NSP analytics servers

An NSP analytics server creates on-demand and scheduled reports about various network conditions and trends for display in the NSP Analytics reports. An analytics server generates the reports using business intelligence software to analyze raw and aggregated NE statistics data collected by the NFM-P.

Data stores

The NSP uses various forms of persistent storage for statistics and network data model information. In addition to the NSP PostgreSQL database, an NSP deployment may include an NSP auxiliary database, and for classic management, an NFM-P database.