Patent ID: 7400583

Claim:
A system for monitoring a communications network, comprising many components, and being arranged for carrying many flows of telecommunications traffic, having different financial values for an operator of the communications network, the system being coupled to receive information from the components about to monitor the flows in the network, and having being coupled to a store of value information based on one or more service level agreements relating to at least some of the flows, the value information indicating one or both of a positive revenue from the successful operation of the flow, and a negative revenue if the flow is degraded, the system further comprising: a flow identifier part for using the information about the flows in the network to determine and output an indication of identifying which of the monitored flows of traffic rely on a given one or more of the components, and a valuer part arranged to receive the indication of which of the monitored flows of traffic rely on the given one or more of the components, and arranged to use that indication to retrieve corresponding value information for the indicated flows from the store, and to use that corresponding value information to determine a total value of the indicated identified flows from the store of value information relating to the identified flows.