Network Operations Center

• A network operations center for one location

• or in more locations from which control is exercised over

• Telecom networks,

• PSTN, ISDN, PLMN 2G, 2G/3G , B3G

One NOC or more than one NOC

• Large organizations may operate more than one NOC,

• To manage different networks or

• To provide geographic redundancy in the event of one site being unavailable or offline or Failure.

Responsibility of NOCs

• To Monitor the network for alarms or

• certain conditions requiring special attention to avoid impact on the network's performance ,

• To avoid interruption.• To ensure perfect network performance • NOCs are responsible for monitoring for

1. Power failures,

2. BER, FER, and circuits down alarms) and

3. other performance parameters that may affect the network’s health (Interference, Noise, Distortion, Low/High RSSI , site uptime/downtime etc)

Responsibility of NOCs

4. Analyse problems,

5. Perform troubleshooting,

6. Communicate with site ENGINEERS and other NOCs,

7. Track problems through resolution.

8. If necessary, NOCs escalate problems to the appropriate personnel level.

9. For severe conditions that are impossible to anticipate – such as a power failure or optical fiber cable cut etc

10.NOCs have to immediately contact ENGINEERS to remedy the problem.

NOC set up

• NOCs are frequently set up with several rows of desks, all facing a video wall, showing details of

• Highly significant alarms, • (Critical, Major, Minor, Alerting alarms etc)

• ongoing incidents and general n/w performance; • The corner is used for showing a news TV chl or

weather TV chl, as this can keep the NOC ENGINEERS aware of current events which may have an impact on the network.

Overview of a typical NOC. Lot of monitors (front), backbone overview

(back) and news broadcast on TV-set (right)

NOC OPERATIONAL (24*7*365)

• NOC staff may perform extra duties;

• a network with equipment in public areas (such as a mobile network BTS) may be required to have a telephone number attached to the equipment for emergencies (EOW);

• as the NOC is continuously (24*7*365) staffed

Tier 1 –tier 4 NOC engineer

• NOCs often escalate issues in a hierarchical manner,• if an issue is not resolved in a specific time frame,• Next level is informed to speed up problem

remediation.

• NOCs have multiple "tiers", which define how experienced/skilled a NOC engineer is.

• A newly-hired NOC engineer might be considered a "tier 1", whereas others may be of level "tier 3" or "tier 4".

• Hence some problems are escalated within a NOC before a site engineer or other network engineer is contacted.