Determining the probable cause of a reduction in the quality of a service as a function of the evolution of a set of services

• US 20030135510A1
• Filed: 01/13/2003
• Published: 07/17/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 01/14/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: WSOU Investments, LLC (WSOU Holdings, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Martinot, Olivier, Papini, Helene
• Granted Patent: US 7,610,370 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/100
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5019 Ensuring fulfilment of SLA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/091 Measuring contribution of individual network components to actual service level

Abstract

A service management system for determining a set of network elements constituting a possible cause of degraded quality of one or more services determines the quality of other services and determines the set as a function of the quality of the other services and network elements utilizing the other services.

Claims

1. A service management system for determining a set of network elements constituting a possible cause of degraded quality of one or more services, said system being adapted to determine the quality of other services and to determine said set as a function of:

the quality of said other services, and

network elements utilizing said other services.

2. The service management system claimed in claim 1 wherein the network elements of said set are associated with probabilities of being the cause of the degraded quality of said service.

3. The service management system claimed in claim 2 wherein the probability for each network element is determined as a function of the ratio between the sum of the degrees to which services utilizing said network element are degraded.

4. The service management system claimed in claim 3 wherein each service is associated with a service level agreement and said degree to which services utilizing said network element are degraded has the value 1 if said service level agreement is not complied with and 0 otherwise.