System and method for monitoring point identification

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The present invention is directed to an improved system and method for enhancing the performance monitoring capabilities of a telecommunications network management system.
Systems and methods are presented for: (1) identifying monitoring points within the network according to a customer request, (2) setting thresholds for services required by a customer along a network path, and (3) activating previously identified monitoring points in the event that a degradation or failure is detected at the path endpoints.
A telecommunications network can be divided into a mesh of network elements interconnected by digital circuits.
Together, the network elements and digital circuits transmit information between customer locations.
More precisely, digital circuits refer to electrical framing structures corresponding to particular digital data bit rates.
The higher the digital data bit rate, the more information that can be transmitted by a digital circuit.
As shown in Table 1, a DS0 level circuit has a digital data bit rate of 0.
064 megabits per second (Mbps).
This 0.
064 Mbps channel carries a single voice channel.
As further illustrated in Table 1, a DS1 circuit can carry information at 1.
544 Mbps, while a DS3 circuit can carry information at 44.
736 Mbps.
The DS0, DS1, and DS3 circuits are defined by the USA standard, which is also used in the countries of Australia, Canada and Japan.

TABLE 1
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USA Standard CCITT Standard
Signal
Carrier Rate in Signal Carrier
Rate in
Level System Mbps Level System
Mbps
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DS0 -- 0.
064 CEPT0 -- 0.
064
DS1 T1 1.
544 CEPT1 E1 2.
048
DS3 T3 44.
736 CEPT2 E3 34.
368
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Table 1 also shows the digital bit rate in Mbps for CEPT0-CEPT2 circuits, which are used in CCITT countries