Your VoIP service is only as reliable as your network connection and management system. Businesses of all sizes and from different industries are turning to VoIP for its features, cost savings and call quality. However, being able to manage network performance is a critical factor for any provider.

BroadSoft (News - Alert) is a provider of VoIP applications and unified communications and is the backbone of more than 500 telecommunication service providers’ networks, empowering them to deliver enhanced and personalized communication and entertainment services to subscribers.

Its BroadWorks VoIP communication application server enables service providers to offer a comprehensive portfolio of business and consumer communications applications and value added applications from a common network platform. It delivers communication solutions that integrate video, fax, voice and e-mail communications for businesses and consumers worldwide. It also offers unified communications and consumer experience solutions to allow service providers to offer innovative and revenue-generating services to businesses and residential customers.

To manage and control its system infrastructure, the BroadWorks Element Management System (EMS) offers an integrated view of BroadWorks system resources for network monitoring and simplifies network-wide tasks such as software patching and user migrations.

Utilizing the WebNMS framework, EMS simplifies BroadWorks' integration into a service provider network by providing a single point of access for managing the fault, performance and configuration of all BroadWorks network elements. It is designed to streamline the operations and management tasks of a large-scale BroadWorks deployment.

The WebNMS framework has become the preferred EMS framework with deployments in every Tier 1 carrier globally, enabling network equipment providers to cost-effectively build highly customizable EMS solutions that can dramatically cut development times while meeting carrier-grade network requirements. It supports numerous standards-based operating systems and application servers, as well as hardware platforms and databases, giving network engineers complete choice in their network design.

BroadWorks EMS provides a network wide view of the health of all BroadWorks network elements and simplifies remote login through the CLI or Web portal. Centralized tools enable users to manage software patches, system configuration and troubleshooting. To simplify integration with a standards-based network management system, the EMS can expose one centralized SNMP interface and provide an aggregate view of all the faults, alarms and performance metrics in the system.

Image via BroadSoft

From an EMS GUI perspective, operators can view all event and alarm conditions and dynamically customize performance thresholding to tune the system for better health status accuracy. Performance monitoring looks at server metrics like CPU utilization, memory, swap spaces and database counters. In addition, operators can generate exportable XML system performance reports and perform routine system polices such as software imaging and backups. All configuration changes, adds and deletes are logged into a audit trail.

It addresses potential points of failure at several levels; the Broadworks EMS, the BroadWorks servers and the service provider’s IP network. All layers are deployed in primary/secondary redundant pairs or clusters. In the event that the primary server fails, or is otherwise inaccessible, traffic is rerouted the secondary server.  This is no trivial task and requires specialized engineering at the EMS, OS, database and hardware levels to achieve 99.999 percent uptimes, WebNMS explained.