Patent ID: 6477568
Filing Date: 2002-11-05
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A method of manipulating and reconfiguring a plurality of trails in a communications network, each said trail comprising a transport entity capable of transferring network management information, so as to accommodate topology changes in a communications network comprising a plurality of network elements controlled by network element controllers and one or more network controllers, the or each network controller comprising a trail detection application, a trail route finder application and a trail manipulation application, wherein said method comprises the steps of:representing the network as a plurality of layers, each said layer containing a plurality of trails and being represented by a respective layer network domain managed object describing that layer across the network, each said trail being represented by a respective trail managed object; representing each trail as a plurality of sub-network connection managed objects; storing a plurality of objects representing said network elements, said layer network domain managed objects and said trails; for each said stored trail managed object representing a trail across said network, modifying a set of pointers of said trail managed object to point to a plurality of other said objects representing endpoints, connections and network elements for defining said trail; and manipulating and reconfiguring said trails in accordance with said modified trail object for implementing said trail in said network so as to perform stretch, split operations on said trails in response to the addition of elements to the network, and shrink and join operations on said trails in response to removal of elements from the network.