DSTS: An expert system for diagnosis of advanced digital subscriber services

While the internal networks of almost all telecommunications providers are completely digital, the services provided to end-users (customers) by telecommunications providers-voice, modem, fax, etc.-are today predominantly analog. However, the ability and demand to provide digital services-basic and primary rate ISDN, and IP over digital subscriber loop transport (xDSL) technology-is rapidly growing. Telecommunication providers are now faced with a series of operations, maintenance, and provisioning challenges to economically be able to provide these digital services. One of these challenges is the ability to remotely diagnose faults and service effecting problems. In this paper we will discuss an expert system-DSTS (Digital Services Test System) developed by GTE that provides remote diagnosis and testing of Basic and Primary Rate ISDN, IP over xDSL transport, digital service layer verification and bandwidth testing, and digital subscriber loop pre-qualification.