COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK MANAGEMENT

• US 20130311673A1
• Filed: 12/23/2011
• Published: 11/21/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/24/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Original Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Inventors: Karthikeyan, Vidhyalakshmi, Nauck, Detlef Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 11,310,152 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/239
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/044 comprising hierarchical management structures
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/147 for predicting network behaviour
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5025 by proactively reacting to service quality change, e.g. by reconfiguration after service quality degradation or upgrade
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/00 Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks routing or path finding in wireless networks H04W40/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/22 Alternate routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/30 Routing of multiclass traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/42 Centralised routing

Abstract

The present invention provides a communications network which is divided into a plurality of segments, with, each segment comprising one or more routers and one or more communications links that connect the routers. Each of the segments also comprises a segment management module. Each of the segment management modules reports to a supervisory management module and the communications network may comprise one or more supervisory management modules. If a segment management module predicts that a QoS threshold will be breached then it may re-route a data flow within that segment. If such a re-route is not possible then it will send a request to its supervisory management module to initiate a re-routing to a further segment.

Claims

1. A communications network comprising:

a plurality of network segments, each of the plurality of network segments comprising a segment management module, one or more routers and a plurality of communications links, the communications links connecting each router to one or more other routers; and

a supervisory management module, wherein, in use, the network is configured such that each segment management module predicts the performance of the or each router in its respective segment that carries a data flow based on operational data reported by the or each router and if the predicted performance exceeds a threshold value, that segment management module will

a) identify an alternative routing for the data flow within that network segment;

or

b) if an alternative routing for the data flow cannot be found within that network segment, send a report to the supervisory management module, the supervisory management module being configured to, in use, take action in response to the report.

2. A communications network according to claim 1, wherein the supervisory management module will increase the threshold value for the network segment which generated the report.

3. A communications network according to claim 2, wherein the supervisory management module will decrease the threshold value for one or more other network segments which carry the data flow.

4. A communications network according to claim 3, wherein the total of the threshold values for all the network segments carrying the data flow remains constant.

5. A communications network according to claim 1, wherein the supervisory management module permits the segment management module which generated the report to re-route the data flow to a further network segment.

6. A communications network according to claim 5, wherein the supervisory management module identifies a router within a further network segment for the data flow to be re-routed to.

7. A communications network according to claim 6, wherein the supervisory management module further identifies additional re-routings such that the data flow can be routed to its original destination.

8. A communications network according to claim 1, wherein the supervisory management module instructs the segment management module which generated the report to ignore that the predicted performance will exceed the threshold value.

9. A communications network according to claim 8, wherein the supervisory management module will send the instruction to the segment management module if the predicted performance will exceed the threshold value for a limited period of time.

10. A communications network according to claim 8, wherein the supervisory management module will send the instruction to the segment management module if the predicted performance will only exceed the threshold value by a limited amount.

11. A method of managing a communications network, the communications network comprising:

a plurality of network segments, each of the plurality of network segments comprising a segment management module, one or more routers and a plurality of communications links, the communications links connecting each router to one or more other routers; and

a supervisory management module,

the method comprising the steps of;

i) each segment management module predicting the performance of the or each router in its respective segment that carries a data flow based on operational data reported by the or each router and if the predicted performance exceeds a threshold value, that segment management module will

ii) identify an alternative routing for the data flow within that network segment;

or

iii) if an alternative routing for the data flow cannot be found within that network segment, send a report to the supervisory management module, the supervisory management module being configured to, in use, take action in response to the report.

12. A data carrier device comprising computer executable code for performing a method according to claim 11.