Patent ID: 7756960

Claim:
A network equipment management system for a communications network comprising network equipment units carrying out traffic processing operations associated with services and defined by policy rules delivered in a form of primary data by a policy server; the network equipment management system comprising: processing module interfaced between said policy server and said network equipment units allowing centralized management of said policy rules and installation of the policy rules in said network equipment units; protocol adaptation module having a conversion module which, on receiving primary data from said policy server intended for at least one designated network equipment unit, converts said primary data into configuration commands to be sent to said designated equipment unit in accordance with management protocol of the designated equipment unit; and a memory which stores descriptors each associated with one aspect of at least one of said network equipment units and said memory comprising for at least some of the descriptors management protocols used by said network equipment units, wherein said protocol adaptation module determines in said memory the management protocol used by the at least one designated network equipment unit to which configuration commands are sent, wherein, the protocol adaptation module converts said policy rules from the policy server into the configuration command specific to the designated equipment unit based on a management protocol used by said designated equipment unit as determined by the processing module, wherein the policy server validates the policy rules received from a policy manager and sends the validated policy rules to a layer that includes an element management system providing a dialogue interface between the network equipment units and a network management system.