Patent ID: 7802287

Claim:
A broadband network comprising: a hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network having network elements operable for communicating telephony, data, and video signals with customer-premises equipment of subscribers; an HFC network manager for monitoring status and configuration of the network elements and the customer-premises equipment, wherein the HFC network manager generates alarm data indicative of improper status and configuration of the network elements and the customer-premises equipment; a service, design, and inventory (SDI) database operable with the HFC network manager for storing data indicative of the configuration of the network elements and the customer-premises equipment, wherein the database further stores data indicative of physical and logical connections between the network elements and the customer-premises equipment; a fault manager having an alarm visualization tool operable with the HFC network manager and the database for generating visual displays of the status and configuration of the network elements and the customer-premises equipment overlaid with the alarm data along with the physical and logical connections between the network elements and the customer-premises equipment; a trouble ticket system operable for generating trouble ticket alerts in response to improper status of at least one of the network elements and the customer-premises equipment, wherein the alarm visualization tool is operable with the trouble ticket system for displaying the trouble ticket alerts for the at least one of the network elements and the customer-premises equipment having improper status on the visual displays; and a correlation system for correlating data including trouble ticket alerts generated by the trouble ticket system and the status of the network elements and the customer-premises equipment, wherein the alarm visualization tool displays the correlated data on the visual displays.