Advanced SLA and Performance Reporting for DSL Networks

June 20, 2000 -- Copper Mountain Networks and DeskTalk Systems announced an alliance that provides an advanced network management reporting solution for DSL networks. 

The solution feeds performance statistics gathered by Copper Mountain's CopperEdge DSL concentrators into DeskTalk's TREND performance management solution, and enables CLECs and ISPs to generate capacity planning, performance monitoring, and Service Level Agreement (SLA) reports.

According to the companies, the Copper Mountain-DeskTalk solution enables service providers to generate a variety of reports for both internal and external use. Performance management and capacity planning reports will help carriers determine if their Copper Mountain equipment is optimally provisioned and help them anticipate the need for more capacity. Carriers can also use the Copper Mountain-DeskTalk solution to diagnose historical or chronic problems and alert Network Operation Centers to potential problems.

The companies also claim that CLECs can generate SLA reports to assure their ISP and large enterprise customers that they are fulfilling their performance commitments. The CopperEdge records information on each DSL service a carrier offers and partitions information by service provider. TREND can use this information to create SLA reports for each service provider and publish them securely over the Web. Service providers, in turn, may decide to publish the SLA reports to their end users. The ability to provide SLA reports should reduce carriers' costs and increases revenues by enabling them to offer usage-based billing and reporting.

"As CLECs move from offering best-effort Internet access services to offering mission-critical services such as Frame Relay over their DSL networks, it becomes ever more important that they be able to easily and efficiently manage network performance, and offer their subscribers SLA reports," said Keith Higgins, director of marketing for Copper Mountain. "The ability to back up their SLA guarantees with performance monitoring data will enable carriers and service providers to offer new Quality of Service (QoS) and tiered service offerings."

"Every carrier offers a different suite of services and an assortment of SLAs to back them," said Steve Mank, vice president of marketing and business development at DeskTalk. "Porting information from CopperEdge concentrators to DeskTalk's TREND gives our joint customers the customized reports they need to meet the specific requirements of each and every end user."