Patent ID: 7389345

Claim:
A method for creating an updateable report representing the alarm status of a network comprising: categorizing all alarms generated in the network based on the source and type of alarm; placing the alarms in at least one filtering system based on source and type, wherein the filtering system replaces selected alarms with alarm representations, and wherein the filtering system includes each of a group of filtering systems comprising: a temporal filtering system, wherein the temporal filtering system includes at least one temporal filter that is selected from a group of temporal filters comprising: a frequency-based filter that generates a temporal alarm representation that replaces multiple alarms in response to a quantity of the multiple alarms exceeding a threshold within a period of time; and a cycling-based filter that generates a second temporal alarm representation that replaces multiple alarms in response to a quantity of cycles of the multiple alarms exceeding a threshold within a period of time, wherein each cycle of the multiple alarms includes generating an alarm followed by clearing the alarm; and a linkage-based filtering system, wherein the linkage-based filtering system generates a linkage-based alarm representation that replaces sympathetic alarms generated by portions of the network impacted by a failure of a first portion of the network; and updating a report with the alarm representations.