Patent ID: 7082554
Filing Date: 2006-07-25
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method isolating the source of a fault detected in a group of interconnected components forming part of a communications network carrying data traffic, said method comprising: (i) monitoring individual components of said group to detect errors in said data traffic; (ii) reporting errors detected at each of said components to a common error administrator for said group of interconnected components; (iii) maintaining a record of an error status of said components at said common error administrator; and (iv) performing a rule-based analysis at said common error administrator based on an overall knowledge of the error status of the group of components to correlate error reports collected by said common error administrator so as to isolate the probable source of an error reported to said administrator by any one of said components; wherein said error administrator classifies reported errors into related categories, and errors in different categories are correlated independently; and wherein said categories are selected from the group consisting of: datapath interface errors, control path interface errors, and connectivity errors.