mNET Technology

Author: Paddy Murphy

mNET is a system that allows 4G-LTE services to be provided to rural areas in the US, there is also a migration path for 5G. mNET can support standalone rural networks, private and virtual private wireless networks, network expansion and wireless roaming, integrated LTE and Wi-Fi networks and multi-carrier small cell networks.

The implementation of the mNET trap rule differs from traditional DAS technologies.

• mNET traps are received through a VPN server on the load balancer.
• mNET traps are received at the Controller level only
• Clear traps are not received.
• Tickets are only created for major and critical alarms.
• There are no waiting periods for mNET ticket creation, tickets are created instantly.
• A groovlet automatically clears the active alarms when a mNET ticket is created.
• When a mNET controller in under maintenance active alarms are not created.
• mNET tickets are created on the ExteNet mNET Alarm workflow.

mNET traps are received through a VPN server installed on the ExteNet Load balancer. For more information, see: OpenVPN. If the OpenVPN client is not running mNET traps will not be received. A watchdog has been set up monitor the OpenVPN service (mNetOpenVpnClientProcessInactive). If this watchdog is received restarting the VPN server will clear the watchdog.Please be aware that the OpenVPN configuration files on ExteNet Production and ExteNet QA are different.

Restart OpenVPN Client

sudo service openvpn start

Check if OpenVPN service is running on load balancer

ps -edf | grep openvpn

Confirm that OpenVPN service is configured correctly on load balancer; an entry should be returned for the command below

ifconfig tun0

The following requirements have been received from ExteNet (Gevara Tali) regarding mNET traps:

• Tickets should be created instantly for all critical and major alarms - see mNET trap rule for list of traps that should create critical & major alarms.
• If a repeat major or critical trap is received a new ticket should be created for this trap.
• Tickets are not created for minor alarms.
• The interfaceTrap creates critical tickets when the varbind value interfaceState is 16 (iWlanLinkDown) or 25 (iS5S8Down)
• Include all mNET trap varbind values in the SNMP Trap Text field in the SNMP trap form.

New mNET tickets were not been created because an existing open active alarm already existed for the mNET trap. A solution to this issue was to implement a groovlet that automatically clears the mNET active alarms when a mNET ticket is created. The cleared reason for active alarms cleared by this groovlet is 'Cleared by mNET active alarm clear groovlet'. The groovlet can be found at https://nocportal.extenetsystems.com/Ticketer/groovlet/show/22777.

• EXTENET-MNET-MIB.mib