In the marketplace, operators are demanding systems that require less dedicated skill to configure and operate. Increasingly, the market is demanding simplification of configuration, automation where possible, and also added capabilities for the monitoring and control of system health.

SatNet has responded to these market demands by developing the NetManager™, a powerful management system capable of meeting the functional and scalability requirements of virtually any system configuration. The NetManager™ controls all the key operational elements of the SatNet Hubs and Terminals. The NetManager™ is not only the network operator's and the service providers' critical interface in controlling and monitoring of the network performance, but it also is the core repository of the parameters that shape the subscribers' experience.

The NetManager™ provides all necessary functions such as Subscriber Management, QoS Management, SLA Management and Configuration Management. The NetManager™ allows the user to navigate via a graphical representation of different areas of management:

• Air Interface Management: presents the elements of the frequency plan, included in frequency bands, both on the forward and return links. The return link elements extend up to where the bandwidth is scheduled as a block for a group of terminals.
• Service Level Agreement Management: presents the terminal groups and their use of bandwidth and QoS, on the forward and return links. Special partitions for application reservation (e.g. VoIP or Diffserv) are shown when they are configured. Also displayed is the structure of the return link SLA applicable for rain fade mitigation and load balancing.
• Network Management: presents the SITs and their use of signalling tokens, such as IP addresses of forward link routes, VCCs on the return link (for ATM) or PIDs (for MPEG).
• Equipment Management:presents all the gateway physical devices managed by the NetManager™. Examples include the modulator, the IP/DVB encapsulator, the RLSS, the router(s).
• Operations Management: presents links to all the statistics tables available from the NetManager™. Examples of these statistics are forward link routes traffic statistics, return link group traffic, VoIP statistics, rain fade statistics.
• NetManager Users Management: presents the users of the NetManager™, categorized according to their role: Network Operator Administrator/Operator/Viewer and Service Provider Administrator/Operator/Viewer.
• Terminal Management: lists all terminals of the system with convenient filtering and sorting capabilities. The status of each terminal is displayed and updated periodically. Displayed parameters include QoS, signal to noise ratio, status of the return link connection and IP connectivity.

Network Operator tools are provided for management of the hub configuration:

• IP gateway management
• Multiple service provider management
• Single tenant management

• Management of Service Level Agreements (SLA)
• Management of QoS (FL and RL)
• Management of remote terminals

• Multiple service providers can access the system simultaneously through remote connections. Web access allows service providers located in different regions to effectively operate a section of the hub.
• Security is provided at two levels.
  • Remote access to the system is via secure mechanisms, e.g. Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
  • Access to the database is restricted to ensure that any given Service Provider can view and/or make modifications only within the scope of the SLAs granted to them.
• Features are provided that allow automatic terminal configuration to perform commands and perform queries on the terminals, including faults and performance as well as performance monitoring.

Our top-of-the-line Control and Monitor System (CMS) controls and monitors the various sub-systems of the SatNet Hubs. The CMS is used by the network operator, either at a local console or remotely (through CORBA client-server interactions). In a graphical environment, the user can monitor the health of the entire system and allow corrective action to be taken in the event of a system fault. The CMS catches SNMP traps and gathers performance indicators, and presents this information to the network operator in an intuitive manner via a simple and clean Graphical User Interface (GUI) featuring color coded equipment status and data flows.

Some examples of the CMS’ flexibility and versatility:

• Drivers supported include SNMP, proprietary protocols over RS-232 and 422, telnet, SSH.
• Monitoring of the status of the RAID arrays of gateway servers.
• Coloring of data flows.
• Customizable graphical view of the return link connection and IP connectivity.

Different levels of access and monitor & control are available to the network management users. The NetManager™ allows three levels of users to access the system:

• Administrator (can perform all actions on the NetManager™)
• Operator (can perform monitor and control actions only)
• Viewer (can perform monitor functions only)

Furthermore, different levels of control can be configured, each with a defined set of privileges, such as Network Operator, Service Provider, Administrator etc…

Along with the operation of the network from the Hub's physical location, the NetManager™ has been designed to securely support remote monitoring and control. Different network management users can access the web server of the NetManager™, including the optional Control and Monitoring System (CMS), from their respective locations provided they have a PC console with a web browser and internet access. The NetManager™ guarantees the security of the transactions by the secure version of the HTTP protocol, as well as separate authenticated connections to the database.