Service Alarm Correlation

• US 20080276135A1
• Filed: 11/29/2004
• Published: 11/06/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/15/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Unwired Planet LLC (JP Morgan Chase & Co)
• Original Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Inventors: Granath, Johan
• Granted Patent: US 7,733,767 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0213 Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0663 Performing the actions predefined by failover planning, e.g. switching to standby network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5012 determining service availability, e.g. which services are available at a certain point in time

Abstract

A system and method for correlating alarms from a plurality of network elements (NEs) are provided to unambiguously associate separate alarms to one another. This is accomplished by a method where a fault identifier FID is generated by a serving NE who discovered the faulty hardware or software unit. The serving NE signals its lost or degraded service to a client NE in a traffic message and appends the generated FID to the traffic message. The client NE extracts the FID from the traffic message and appends it to a service alarm which the NE sends to a network management system. The serving NE also generates an alarm message and provides it with same FID. The serving NE sends the alarm message and its FID to the network management system. The service alarm and the alarm message received by the network management system will thus contain the same FID. In the management system the FID is used to correlate the two alarms with one another.

Claims

1. A system for correlating alarms from a plurality of network elements NEs in a telecommunications network, said system comprising:

NEs which depend on each other in such way that if one NE fails then another NE will fail to provide its services as consequence, said failing NE referred to as serving NE and said another NE referred to as client NE,

serving NEs being adapted to signal traffic messages to the client NE, but being unable to provide information on a faulty hardware or software unit, and

a network management system supervising the NEs and adapted to receive and store alarms characterized in that a serving NE is provided with;

means for generating a fault identifier (FID) related to the faulty hardware or software unit,

means for forwarding an alarm message to the network management system and including therein the FID,

means for providing the traffic message with the same FID, and in that

the client NE is provided with means for extracting the FID and append the extracted FID to a service alarm message expressing the service fault and with means for forwarding the service alarm message to the network management system.

2. A system in accordance with claim 1, characterized in that the FID generator is adapted to generate a randomly selected number for each fault.

3. A system in accordance with claim 1, characterized in that the FID generator is adapted to extract the name of the NE that the generator resides in, and combine it with an integer, which is stepped for every new detected fault.

4. A system in accordance with claim 1, characterized in that the information model exposed in the interface between the serving NE and the client NE comprises information to set up and maintain traffic connections between the client and serving NEs, but not information to express faulty hardware units.

5. A system in accordance with claim 1, characterized in that the system is a radio network, the serving node is a radio base station, and the client node is a radio network controller.

6. A serving NE comprising:

program software for a service and for operating the service,

hardware (HW),

an interface towards a client NE said interface having service primitives for signalling availability of requested services but having no service primitives for signalling of a faulty hardware or software unit,

an alarm interface towards a network management system,

fault detection means for detecting a faulty hardware or software unit in the serving NE,

means for generating an alarm message in response to detection of a faulty hardware or software unit by the fault detection means, the alarm message being forwarded to the network management system interface, characterized by

a device for generating unique fault indicators (FIDs),

a device for appending a generated unique FID to the alarm message, and for appending the same unique FID to a traffic message sent to client NE over said interface towards the client NE.

7. A client NE comprising:

program software for a service and for operating the service,

hardware (HW),

an interface towards a serving NE, said interface having service primitives for signalling availability of requested services but having no service primitives for signalling of faulty hardware or software unit in the serving NE,

an alarm interface towards a network management system,

fault detection means for extracting service primitives received from the serving NE,

means for generating a service alarm in response the fault detection means extracting service primitives indicative of the inability of the serving NE to provide the requested service, the service alarm being forwarded to the network management system interfaces,

characterized by the fault detection means being adapted to extract a fault identifier (FID) appended to service primitives indicative of the inability of the serving NE to provide the requested service, and that the client NE further comprises a device for appending the extracted FID to the service alarm generated in response to the fault detection means extracting service primitives indicative of the inability of the serving NE to provide the requested service.

8. A method for correlating alarms from a plurality of network elements (NEs) in a telecommunications network, wherein NEs which depend on each other in such way that if one NE fails then another NE will fail to provide its services as consequence, the failing NE referred to as serving NE and the another NE referred to as client NE, said method comprising:

the serving NE discovers a faulty hardware or software unit and in response thereto forwards an alarm message indicative of the faulty unit to a network management system,

the serving NE forwards to the client NE a traffic message indicative of the inability of the serving NE to provide the requested service, but is unable to forward information on the faulty hardware,

client NE receives said traffic message and forwards in response thereto a service alarm indicative of the lost service to the network management system, and

the network management system stores the service and hardware alarms and presents them to an operator, characterized by

the serving NE upon detection of a faulty hardware or software unit generates fault identity (FID) and associates it with the detected faulty unit,

the serving NE appending the FID to a traffic message which it transmits to the client NE and to an alarm message which it transmits to the management system,

the client NE appending the FID to service alarm, and

the network management system upon reception of the service alarm and the alarm message associates the two alarms to one another using said FID.

9. A method in accordance with claim 8, characterized in that the fault identifier is a randomly selected number unique for the NE in which the fault is detected.

10. A method in accordance with claim 8, characterized in that the fault identifier is a combination of the name of the NE in which the generator resides and an integer, which is stepped for every new detected fault.