Topology-based fault analysis in telecommunications networks

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Telecommunications networks are typically monitored by Remote Monitoring Systems (RMSs), as shown in FIG.
1 105, collocated or in close geographic proximity with the network equipments 107.
The equipments of interest for this invention include digital cross-connects (DXCs 108), light terminating and regeneration equipments (LTEs 110 and LREs 114), radio transmitters and repeaters (RADs 118 and RPTs 116), and multiplexers (MUXs 120).
The RMS devices mediate the exchange of data 106 with these network equipments.
Fault alarms, status information and performance statistics are collected from the equipments, and various control commands are sent to the equipments.
These RMS devices report the collected data 104 to a central Fault Management System (FMS) 101, and the devices receive control commands from users or from automated processes on the FMS.
The FMS will provide a user fault alarm display and control command interface 100.
The RMS devices are designed to communicate with the disparate equipments using a wide variety of communications protocols and data formats.
These RMSs must also exchange data with the FMS in a fairly standard format (although the precise content of exchanged messages will typically be specific for a particular type of equipment).
The RMS will time-stamp the fault alarm messages before sending them to the FMS.
The fault occurrence times are required by the outage analysis process described herein.
Therefore, the clocks on all the remote monitoring devices must be synchronized to some known accuracy.
This invention includes a process that executes, continuously and automatically, on the central FMS.
Such FMS systems typically contain a process that receives messages from the RMSs, recognizes the device-specific format of each message, and extracts individual data elements from the message for the convenience of other processes executing on the FMS (alarm reporting, for example).
This invention contains an interface, shown in FIG