Patent ID: 7855952

Claim:
A method for identifying and resolving a silent failure in a telecommunications network, comprising: collecting performance data associated with data traffic passing through a network element in the telecommunications network; determining whether the performance data has fallen below a threshold to identify the silent failure at the network element, the silent failure failing to trigger an alarm included on the network element; responsive to determining that the performance data is below the threshold and thereby identifying the silent failure at the network element, retrieving troubleshooting rules; and resolving the silent failure based on the performance data and the troubleshooting rules, wherein the performance data comprises a current number of packets being transmitted within a time interval, and wherein determining whether the performance data has fallen below the threshold to identify the silent failure at the network element comprises: determining a difference between the current number of packets being transmitted within the time interval and a previous number of packets being transmitted within the time interval, the current number of packets being less than the previous number of packets, determining whether the difference is greater than a minimum value, and responsive to determining that the difference is greater than the minimum value, determining that the performance data has fallen below the threshold to identify the silent failure at the network element.