Telstra – Diamond Network Planning System

The Problem:

Telstra's Frame Relay and ATM network have supported a wide variety of customers and applications. Over time, the network evolves and expands to accommodate growth in demand. Being able to verify that changes to network topology and capacity meet detailed performance and reliability requirements is a complex task, especially when details of network layer routing rules need to be taken into account. Telstra needed techniques and tools to assist in the process of change verification so as to ensure that such requirements continue to be met.

Solution:

We undertook the research and development required to meet that need. The project involved:

• Interfacing to databases containing information on Telstra 's ATM and Frame Relay network topology and configuration.
• Implementing network routing protocols (such as Private Network Node Interface, PNNI).
• Implementing vendor specific fault recovery algorithms.
• Developing algorithms to determine whether Telstra specific design guidelines would be achieved for a given network topology and utilisation.

The final system developed, known as Diamond, has played an integral role in optimising Telstra's network infrastructure investment.