A national facilities-based Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) operated a 24x7x365 Network Operations Center (NOC) that monitored and managed over 15,000 network devices supporting more than 1 million customers. These devices spanned central offices, fiber hubs, routers, and aggregation switches across regional and metro markets.
Despite using SolarWinds for network monitoring and management, the scale and complexity of the network made outage identification and correlation extremely time-consuming. The NOC struggled to quickly determine whether service-impacting events were isolated to a single office or symptomatic of a broader regional issue. This delay directly affected time-to-resolution (TTR), customer experience, and operational efficiency.
The CLEC needed a streamlined, visual solution to summarize and geographically represent outages, enabling faster correlation by central office, area, or region without requiring manual interpretation of long device lists or status logs.
Solution Delivered
To solve this challenge, we designed and deployed a highly customized outage visualization platform that integrated seamlessly with the customer’s existing SolarWinds Network Management System. Our solution consisted of three core components:
Custom SQL Database Architecture
We developed a standalone Microsoft SQL Server instance that worked in tandem with the existing SolarWinds database. This auxiliary database housed enriched relational data critical for geographic and logical mapping, including:
This allowed for easy transformation of complex tabular network data into visual-ready formats.
Dynamic KML Generation Engine
We implemented a custom application that continuously queried both SolarWinds and the auxiliary SQL database to dynamically generate KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files. These KML files adhered to the Google Earth schema and included:
- Device status and location data grouped by CLLI
- Logical link connections between upstream and downstream devices
- Status coloring:
- Green for devices and links that were operational (collapsed by default)
- Red for any devices or connections reporting a down status (expanded by default)
This allowed for real-time visibility into outage conditions.
Google Earth-Based Visualization Dashboard
Using Google Earth’s native support for KML files, we deployed a live-updating dashboard in the NOC. This dashboard provided a dynamic map-based view of the entire nationwide infrastructure, highlighting problem areas with precision.
When an outage occurred:
This dynamic map drastically reduced the cognitive load required to assess and understand outage impact.
By leveraging the power of SolarWinds for data collection and combining it with Google Earth’s rich visualization capabilities, this solution turned raw network telemetry into actionable intelligence. The use of dynamic map overlays ensured that the NOC team could pinpoint problems faster, improve customer satisfaction, and operate with greater efficiency.
– NOC Director
