RONMON2

RONMON2, short for Remote Radio Network Monitoring version 2, is a network telemetry protocol and suite designed for real-time monitoring of distributed radio access networks. It provides end-to-end visibility into radio performance, congestion, and faults by collecting telemetry from radio units, edge nodes, and transport links and forwarding it to centralized collectors for analysis. The protocol emphasizes interoperability across vendors and scalable telemetry streams for large deployments.

Origin and scope: RONMON2 builds on a prior specification, RONMON1, and was developed through a multi-vendor standards effort in the early 2020s. It aims to unify monitoring data across RAN, backhaul, and core networks, enabling operators to correlate radio performance with network-wide metrics.

Architecture: The solution comprises RONMON Agents installed on network elements, Transit Gateways that route telemetry to Central Monitors, and Central Monitor software that aggregates data, runs analytics, and presents dashboards. Agents emit structured telemetry records using a standardized data model and can stream data in real time or batch mode. The Central Monitor supports anomaly detection, SLA enforcement, and capacity planning.

Data model and transport: Telemetry is modeled with a fixed schema capturing RF metrics, transport statistics, device health, and configuration state. Data is transported securely over TLS, with optional encryption for storage at rest. It supports multiple transport protocols, including gRPC, REST, and message queues, and offers adapters to existing standards such as SNMP and NetConf.

Deployment and usage: RONMON2 is aimed at mobile network operators, large enterprise networks, and research networks. It is used for proactive fault isolation, performance optimization, and capacity planning. Adoption is driven by interoperability, vendor support, and ongoing standardization efforts.

Limitations and security: As a standards-driven solution, practical deployments depend on uptake by equipment vendors and network operators. Security considerations include access control, auditing, secure key management, and privacy protections for telemetry data.