Patent ID: 8051330

Claim:
A method for locating a fault in a network, or in a communication network, comprising: receiving status information relating to at least an alarm, an event, a polled status or a test result in the network; identifying a limited region of the network in which the fault has occurred based on the received status information; constructing a probabilistic model relating possible faults and status information in the identified limited region; and locating the fault based on the constructed probabilistic model and on the received status information, wherein constructing a probabilistic model comprises: for each possible fault in the identified limited region, determining a first probability that a status information is generated when the fault occurs; for each possible status information in the identified limited region, determining a second probability that the status information is generated when no fault occurs in the identified limited region; and constructing the probabilistic model relating faults and status information in the identified limited region based on the determined first and second probabilities.