Data model for Telecommunications Network Inventory

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Data model for Telecommunications Network Inventory

    The Telecommunications Network Inventory data model in ServiceNow Yokohama release provides a comprehensive structure to manage and visualize the relationships between network assets, infrastructure, and services. It supports provisioning, modifying, maintaining, and forecasting your telecommunications network by capturing detailed data about equipment configuration, port availability, and bandwidth allocations across sites and services.

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    This model enables automation in designing and creating network equipment and connections that support both customer service and internal network orders, ensuring efficient network management aligned with industry standards such as TM Forum and MEF.

    Key Features

    • Network Site and Location Management: Records physical locations of network equipment including centers, buildings, floors, and rooms. This helps monitor connection origination and termination, track operational status, and visualize sites within service topologies.
    • Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Integration: Uses Network Inventory extension classes that extend the CMDB Configuration Item (CI) hierarchy, standardizing network asset data and relationships.
    • Extension Classes: The data model includes specialized classes such as:
      • Network Site: Captures location-specific details of network sites.
      • Equipment Holder: Represents physical units like racks and cabinets that contain telecommunications equipment.
      • Telco Equipment: Represents devices like routers, switches, modems, and optical cables.
      • Network Interface and Interface Card: Captures equipment-specific interface attributes and manages physical/logical ports with bandwidth allocations.
      • Physical and Logical Connections: Represent physical port connections and virtual/logical connections respectively.
      • Power Circuit: Represents electrical pathways delivering power within data centers.
      • Network Topology: Defines how network elements such as nodes, edges, and interfaces are organized and interconnected.
      • Facility Hardware: Covers power, HVAC, and network infrastructure and their connectivity within data centers.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enables detailed tracking and management of network assets and physical infrastructure.
    • Supports network design automation to streamline service order fulfillment.
    • Improves visibility into network topology and site locations for fault identification and outage management.
    • Ensures data consistency aligned with telecommunications industry standards, facilitating integration and reporting.
    • Enhances ability to forecast network growth and plan infrastructure upgrades effectively.

    The data model for Telecommunications Network Inventory displays the relationships between your network assets, infrastructure, and services. With this information, you can provision new services, modify existing services, maintain the network, and plan the forecast for the network growth in your organization.

    The data model contains the details about your network assets, such as the telco equipment configuration data, port availability of a framework, and bandwidth allocations between your sites and services. This data model enables you to build, manage, maintain, and allocate the network infrastructure and services. Further, this data model provides a for the automation of design and creation of your network equipment and connections that support the customer service orders and internal network orders.

    The assets, services, and the relationships of your network inventory defines the infrastructure of your telecommunications networks. With this information, you can plan and forecast your network. You can store the data of the asset in a network inventory record.

    The Telecommunications Network Inventory application uses the Network Inventory extension classes that extend the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Configuration Item (CI) class hierarchy. These extensions enable the CMDB to store your network inventory information. Also, these extension classes provide the standardization and consistency that are aligned with the telecommunications industry standards bodies such as TeleManagement (TM) Forum and Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF). To learn more about the Network Inventory (NI) extension classes, see Telecommunications Network Inventory extension classes.

    The following diagram shows the extension classes in the data model for the network inventory.

    Figure 1. Network Inventory data model
    Infographic for network Inventory extension classes. For the details of extension classes, refer to the Network Inventory extension classes section.

    Network site and Network location

    Network site records in the Telecommunications Network Inventory application provide information about the physical location of your network equipment and resources. You can use network site records to:
    • monitor from where your network connections originate and terminate
    • monitor the network centers, buildings, floors, and rooms where your network assets are located
    • track the operational status of your network sites
    • map your network sites in your service topology
    • link your physical locations to your network sites for a better visualization
    • Identify network faults and outages
    A network site is a configuration item (CI) in the Telecommunications Network Inventory application that's derived from the equipment and connections within the network site, while a location is simply a physical address.

    Telecommunications Network Inventory extension classes

    The Telecommunications Network Inventory application uses the generic configuration item (CI) classes that extend the CMDB class hierarchy as shown in the following table. The following table describes the classes that are used within the application.

    Table 1. Network Inventory (NI) extension classes
    Telecommunications Network Inventory class Extends generic CI class Description
    TNI CI Attributes [tni_entity] Non-CI class

    Represents a collection of the common Telecommunications Network Inventory attributes. Use the TNI CI Attribute record to create the relevant common attributes relevant for Telecommunications Network Inventory and makes a relationship with the CI record. To learn more, see TNI CI Attributes form.
    Network Site [cmdb_ci_ni_site] Site [cmdb_ci_site]

    Captures and maintains the location-specific attributes for each network site, including the network centers, buildings, floors, and rooms where the equipment is located.

    The network site records enable you to view all the equipment at a location. You can filter the locations by the assigned type, role, or function categories. To learn more, see cd03bcf4100b78f7354f66e143b9aa86a2b8a05b.dita.
    Equipment Holder [cmdb_ci_equipment_holder] Hardware [cmdb_ci_hardware]

    Represents the physical units that contain the telecommunications equipment, including the cages, bays, cabinets, slots, and relay racks. An equipment holder can contain the other equipment holders. For example, the line-ups contain the individual relay racks and each relay rack contains the equipment shelves.

    Use the equipment holder records to track and manage your network assets. To learn more, see 087c6f8691cefa281d143bdc34fb8dfcc3662262.dita.

    To learn more about the extension classes of the equipment holder, see Equipment holder extension classes.
    Telco Equipment [cmdb_ci_ni_telco_equipment] Network gear [cmdb_ci_netgear]

    Represents a device that provides the technical functionality in a network. Examples include the routers, modems, mobile devices, optical cables,relays, and switches. The equipment can have slots, cards, or ports. The equipment can exist within an equipment holder or by itself because not all equipment is rack mounted.

    Use the equipment record to track and manage the details of your telco equipment. To learn more, see

    Create a telecommunications equipment instance.

    To learn more about the equipment extension classes, see Equipment extension classes.
    Network Interface [cmdb_ci_ni_interface] Network Port [cmdb_ci_ni_network_port]

    Captures and maintains the equipment-specific attributes for the network interfaces. To learn more, see Define the network interface details.
    Interface Card [cmdb_ci_interface_card] Network gear [cmdb_ci_netgear]

    Represents the interface cards that are stored in a network. Cards can occupy more than one slot and can contain other cards. They can be the equipment ports that are physical or logical (virtual). Each port is assigned a bandwidth value. The bandwidths are consumed when you use the ports in the network design.

    To learn more, see Define the card details.
    Physical Connection [cmdb_ci_ni_physical_link] Network Link [cmdb_ci_network_link]

    Represents the physical port connections on the interface cards in your network. To learn more, see Define the physical connection details.
    Logical Connection [cmdb_ci_ni_logical_path] Network Circuit [cmdb_ci_network_circuit]

    Represents the logical or virtual port connections on the network interface cards. A logical connection typically represents the multiple physical connections on an interface card.

    To learn more, see Define the logical connection details.
    Power Circuit (cmdb_ci_circuit) Configuration Item [cmdb_ci] Represents the electrical pathway that delivers power in a data center. To learn more, see Define the power circuit details.
    Topology [cmdb_ci_topology] Network Topology [cmdb_ci_network_topology]

    Represents the grouping of the network elements such as nodes (equipment), edges (connections), and termination points (interfaces), how they are organized and connected to each other.

    To learn more, see Visualization of network topology.
    Facility Hardware Represent power, HVAC, network, and their connectivity in a data center.

    To learn more, see Network inventory facility classes.