Communication Network Management System for Automatic Repair of Failures

• US 20070260911A1
• Filed: 07/01/2005
• Published: 11/08/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Squedin, Sylvain, Saidi, Mohamed Adel, Martinot, Olivier, Marilly, Emmanuel
• Granted Patent: US 8,149,718 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0663 Performing the actions predefined by failover planning, e.g. switching to standby network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/08 Configuration management of networks or network elements address allocation H04L61/50
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/16 using machine learning or artificial intelligence

Abstract

The invention relates to a management system (NMS) for a communication network (N) comprising a diagnostic module (MD) capable of determining a diagnosis (D) based on information (A) provided by network elements (N₁, N₂, N₃, N₄), this diagnosis identifying a failure within the network. The management system also comprises a repair module (MR) designed to determine one or several corrective actions based on at least this diagnosis and to transmit one or several commands (C) corresponding to the corrective actions, to one or several network elements, so as to correct said failure.

Claims

1. Management system (NMS) for a communication network (N) comprising a diagnostic module (MD) capable of determining a diagnosis (D) based on information (A) provided by elements (N₁, N₂, N₃, N₄) of said communication network, said diagnosis identifying a failure within said communication network, said system being characterized in that it also comprises a repair module (MR) designed to determine one or several corrective actions based on at least said diagnosis received from said diagnostic module (MD), to transmit one or several commands (C) corresponding to said corrective action(s), to one or several elements of said communication network, in order to correct said failure, and to transmit a diagnostic request (CD) to the diagnostic module (MD) to trigger determination of a new diagnosis by said diagnostic module.

2. Management system according to claim 1, in which an iteration counter is incremented each time that a new diagnosis is triggered, said management system stopping the diagnosis and repair modules when said iteration counter has reached a predetermined threshold.

3. Management system according to claim 1, in which the command(s) is (are) transmitted through a mediation module (MED) capable of transforming said command(s) formulated in a generic language, into specific commands (C₁, C₂) compliant with command languages specific to different equipment in said communication network.

4. Management system according to claim 2, in which the repair module (MR) has a history of diagnoses and corrective actions determined in each iteration and is capable of putting the communication network back into its state for a given iteration, if the diagnosis is not as correct when said threshold is reached as it was for said given iteration.

5. Management system according to claim 1, in which said repair module is also designed to communicate with a traffic optimization module (TE) if corrective actions cannot be determined satisfactorily to correct said failure, so as to eliminate or limit the influence of said failure on the behavior of said communication network.

6. Management system according to claim 1, in which said diagnostic module (MD) uses a Bayesian network so as to determine said diagnosis.

7. Management system according to claim 1, in which said diagnosis (D) contains at least the description of said failure, the location of said failure and possibly an estimate of the probability associated with said diagnosis.

8. Management system according to claim 1, in which said diagnostic module communicates said diagnosis to said repair module using a message compliant with the SNMP protocol.

9. Management system according to claim 1, in which said repair module has a repair rules base.

10. Management system according to claim 9, in which an iteration counter is incremented each time that a new diagnosis is triggered said management system stopping the diagnosis and repair modules when said iteration counter has reached a predetermined threshold;

and

in which said rules may depend on said iteration counter.

15. Method according to claim 11, in which a command may be transmitted to a traffic optimization module (TE) if corrective actions cannot be determined satisfactorily to correct said failure, so as to eliminate or limit the influence of said failure on the behavior of said communication network.

11. Management method of a communication network (N) comprising a first step for determining a diagnosis (D) based on information (A) provided by elements (N₁, N₂, N₃, N₄) of said communication network, characterized in that it also comprises a second step for determining one or several corrective actions, if said diagnosis identifies a failure, based on at least said diagnosis and transmission of one or several commands (C) corresponding to this (these) corrective action(s), to one or several elements of said communication network, so as to correct said failure, and in that said first step is automatically triggered at the end of said second step, in order to form a processing cycle.

12. Method according to claim 11, in which an iteration counter is incremented each time that a new diagnosis is triggered, said processing cycle stopping when said iteration counter has reached a predetermined threshold.

13. Method according to claim 12, in which a history of diagnoses and corrective actions determined in each iteration is formed in which the communication network is put back into its state for a previous iteration, if the diagnosis is not as correct when said threshold is reached as it was for this previous iteration.

14. Method according to claim 11, in which the command(s) is (are) transmitted through a mediation module (MED) capable of transforming said command(s) formulated in a generic language into specific commands compliant with command languages specific to the different equipment in said communication network.

16. Method according to claim 11, in which said first step uses a Bayesian network so as to determine said diagnosis.

17. Method according to claim 11, in which said diagnosis (D) contains at least the description of said failure, the location of said failure, and possibly an estimate of the probability associated with said diagnosis.