1.Proposed revision of Recommendation M.24 (new M.34)

           INFORMATION FOR PERFORMANCE MONITORING ON
        INTERNATIONAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEMS AND EQUIPMENT

       The following text is proposed to replace the first alinea of    2.3.
The text  under  "2.3.1   Uses  of  performance  monitoring  data,"  and  all
following text, remains unchanged.

"2.3   Monitoring strategies

       In general, failures of equipment should  be  detected  by  continuous
automatic performance monitoring, as opposed to monitoring or testing involving 
human intervention. This capability, however, implies  that  the  performance
monitor feature is built into the digital terminal system, or dedicated external 
performance monitor equipment is provided for each termination. An alternative 
to providing dedicated external performance monitor equipment is  to  provide
remote access to protected monitor  points  and  share  external  performance
monitoring equipment with a number of terminal systems. This alternative of shared, 
but automatic monitoring is considered nearly continuous. Continuous (or nearly 
continuous) monitoring is often made feasible by advances in technology,  and
by virtue of the large number  of  circuits  affected  or  jeopardized  by  a
transmission system failure. While continuous performance monitoring capabilities 
built into transmission systems  and  terminals  are  clearly  the  preferred
implementation for new systems, the concept of nearly continuous monitoring offers an 
efficient  and  cost  effective  means  of  providing  automatic   monitoring
capabilities for existing digital systems not having the built-in capabilities. In 
addition, continuous (or nearly continuous) monitoring is faster, more reliable, and 
less labour intensive than manual monitoring strategies."