A Software Fault Management (SFM) system (10) for managing software faults in a managed mobile telecommunications network. The SFM system (10) includes an Intelligent Management Information Base (I-MIB) (36) comprising a Management Information Base (MIB) (37) and a Knowledge Base (KB) (38) having a functional model (39) of the managed network and a trouble report/known faults (TR/KF) case base (41). The SFM system also includes an intelligent multi-agent portion having a plurality of agents (23-35) which process the software faults utilizing the functional model (39) from the I-MIB (36), case-based information, and other management information. The I-MIB and the intelligent multi-agent portion are compliant with Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) principles and framework. Fault management is both proactive and reactive. The SFM system (10) is made independent of technology-specific implementations by representing the underlying switch design knowledge in a modular and changeable form which is then interpreted by the intelligent multi-agent portion. A clear separation is maintained between the generic procedural inference mechanisms and agents, and the specific and explicit models of the different network elements of a mobile telecommunications network.

Software fault management system

A network management system allows a network administrator to intuitively manage all components of a heterogeneous networked computer system using views of any component or any set of components. These views are generated in a multi-dimensional, virtual reality environment. Navigation tools are provided that allow an operator to travel through the network hierarchy's representation in the virtual environment using an automatic flight mode. Automatic flight mode determines a reasonable trajectory to a network component that avoids collisions with intervening objects in the virtual environment. Since the system is capable of managing a world-wide network, views of network components may be organized by continent, wide area network, city, building, subnet, segment, and computer. A view may also display internal hardware, firmware, and software of any network component. Views of network components may be filtered so only components pertaining to a specific business or other interest are displayed.

Network management system using virtual reality techniques to display and simulate navigation to network components

Systems and methods for defining and using a data collection profile in connection with a telecommunications network that includes multiple devices. Initially, a query is defined that concerns one or more aspects of the communications network. The query is then used as a basis for building a data collection profile. Next, a set of target devices is selected based upon criteria relating to the query. The data collection profile is then provided to the target devices which collect data in accordance with the data collection profile. Finally, the collected data is transmitted to a service platform for further processing.

Rule based data collection and management in a wireless communications network

Collection of data at target wireless devices using data collection profiles

A system for the prioritization of quality of service (QoS) alerts and the analysis of the impact of such alerts on service uses a service model in which services are broken into one or more service components and sub-components. Creation of a service dependency model, which is driven by different phases of a service, is key to being able to understand how alerts at the lowest level of the network components affect the overall service for which they are but a component. Alerts are assigned a “handle” and a severity level. Rules are defined to be applied to the alerts to create a Component Status Indicator for each component including a handle. As each CSI propagates up towards the top of the service model dependency graph, each CSI gets modified according to predefined rules. A service impact index is created when the CSI is propagated to the top service component. For each service that is impacted, weights (multipler) are defined according to duration of the alert, number of subscribers, number of services, QoS class of the services impacted or other factors defined by user. The weights are used to multiply the SII to obtain the overall impacting index, which is sorted to obtain the priority list. This method can be employed either centrally at a network operations center or in a distributed manner by pre-processing at central offices. Information contained in the handle component of the CSI can be used to perform root cause analysis of the service impacting alerts so as to more efficiently identify and correct problems.

Service impact analysis and alert handling in telecommunications systems

A model-based alarm coordination system coordinates primary and secondary alarm notifications in order to ascertain whether they are caused by a single fault, or multiple faults, in a complex electrical system. The alarm coordination function is part of a larger overall Fault Management Support (FMS) system. The FMS system is a framework that, when combined with object-specific fault management parts, offers uniform fault management functions to managed objects (MOs) within the electrical system. Each MO is viewed as a self-contained, functional unit, and is responsible for its own internal fault management. Therefore, there are no global or centralized fault management functions. Object relation models, based on functional dependencies between objects, are used to automatically solve the alarm coordination problem which arises when a large number of faults are reported in response to a single fault which causes out-of-specification performance in many dependent objects. Little object-specific programming is required.

Weine Eriksson

Papers

Model based alarm coordination