formed the connection, the cable was not considered part of the backbone service the NSP provided. The DLEC has thus spent hours placating its irate customer and chasing the CLEC and the NSP about trouble tickets that never should have been closed. This is not an uncommon scenario. Such debacles stand in the way of efficient eBusiness among IICs. Integration among trading partners' trouble management systems could help ease such problems, however, by allowing the ticket issuer better control over a ticket's status, and a better view of what has and has not been done to fix a problem. Policy Management Policy management is a broad category that is relatively new to the OSS world. As we've discussed, technologies such as IP are designed for dynamic configuration and involve many parameters that can be tailored to specific customer needs. Something must manage all of these parameters as they relate not only to specific customers, but also to the various types of traffic each customer originates. That something is often a policy management system. A policy manager is typically a highly reliable, fault tolerant server running rules-based software and maintaining a database that stores "policies" or rules for how different traffic should be treated. Internet service provides a simple example for basic policy management. When a customer "logs on" to an Internet account, he must first be "authenticated." Generally this means an authentication server - a type of policy manager - prompts the user for an account name and password, verifying the response against a database table. In some cases, the The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS Policy Access rights verified Request for Video Conference Call Check available capacity Manage, monitor, communicate between devices Corporate Secure Tunnel Conference Room Conference Room Houston London Figure 5. VPN Policy Management authentication server will also check the originating IP, gateway, or router address to make sure the log-in comes from the right place and has