and fibre management system or circuit inventory database. At that interface, the service qualification mostly involves field-testing units. However, medium and large carriers use remote- testing units that are managed at the NOC. The new technologies of IPv6 and GMPLS favour a self-provisioning and self-qualifying end-user service management process. Such a process allows end-users to customise their service profile. For mass deploy- ment, service providers should implement a centralised and automated end-to-end remote performance monitoring system for visibility over the customer experience. After qualifying a service, the service is monitored from the NOC. If a fault detected then the service must be requalified. Thus, in a well-designed business process, service qualification and monitoring will occur at the same site. This saves time in troubleshooting and reconfiguring the network after requalification. The SQM process demands collection of QoS metrics and SLA performance reporting. In an optical network, fibre commissioning and monitoring are carried out using optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) measurements. Once fibre is commissioned, remote monitoring is best managed from the NOC. At the optical layer, spectrum analysers can be used for service qualification and monitoring. "Bringing-into-service tests" are carried out at the service layer. Monitoring is car- ried out by a remote management system. Ideally, a single unit would support a range of services including SONET, GigE, ATM and IP. The multi-layer SQM approach benefits SLA management where (technologically independent) SLA parameters are specified for each customer and are measured for each service type. The multi-layer SQM approach provides transparent wavelength services. Corre- lating optical layer QoS with the unified service layer adds value to service providers with dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) networks because they need not force customers to use a specific service (e.g. GigE) just so that they may have mon- itoring. Using 