Model-driven open packet telephony management

With large-scale deployments of open packet telephony (OPT) in service provider networks, effective OPT management solutions become a necessity. The current state of the art is characterized by solutions that are fairly element-centric. In part, this comes from the fact that management information models in this domain have not been established and are in their infancy, in particular when it comes to manage OPT as a domain in a network context, beyond the network elements. This paper therefore presents an OPT information model. It addresses the need to model the network elements as well as the OPT application domain as a whole, providing a level of abstraction that allows us to hide much of the underlying distribution of voice functionality. How the model can be leveraged by management applications is also discussed. The presented concepts have been realized as part of an OPT management system.