Patent ID: 7830816

Claim:
A method of maintaining a communication service, comprising: providing a communication path from a customer premises equipment (CPE) in a customer network to a port of a router located in a communication service provider network, wherein the port is allocated to the CPE, and wherein the customer network is different from the communication service provider network; receiving one or more status queries by a query tool in the communication service provider network based on a request from a user interface presented by a computer in the customer network coupled to the CPE; polling the port of the router by the query tool in response to the query tool receiving the one or more status queries, the polling obtains operational parameters of the port; returning the operational parameters of the port obtained by the query tool to the user interface; determining based on the operational parameters of the port returned to the user interface a connectivity of the communication path from the CPE in the customer network to the port of the router in the communication service provider network; determining based on the operational parameters of the port returned to the user interface a status of an interface to the port of the router in the communication service provider network; and determining based on the operational parameters of the port returned to the user interface a quality of service (QoS) of the communication path from the CPE to the port of the router in the communication service provider network.