Patent ID: 7502847

Claim:
A method for communicating an alarm in a computer network, comprising: a network device detecting an event within the network device on the computer network, wherein the network device is included in a particular site in a plurality of sites, and wherein the event results from a change in operation of the network device; in response to detecting the event, the network device generating and propagating an alarm to an alarm identification component that is hosted within the network device; the alarm identification component augmenting the alarm with identification information to create an augmented alarm, wherein the identification information uniquely identifies the particular site among the plurality of sites; and transmitting the augmented alarm to a network operations center for the computer network, wherein the network operations center is external to the particular site and the network operations center processes alarms for each site in the plurality of sites, wherein the step of augmenting the alarm further comprises: determining whether the identification information can be created based on a table that maps network device addresses to identification information; when the identification information can not be created based on the table, determining whether the identification information can be created based on an address of an edge router for the particular site; and when the identification information can not be created based on an address of the edge router for the particular site, creating the identification information using default identification information.