Patent ID: 6871227

Claim:
A distributed system for decoding telecommunication tracer information originating from any telecommunication network element and utilizing any industry standard or proprietary telecommunication protocol comprising: a Catalog Definition Language (CDL) based trace decoding software tool that executes on an application server that is deployed within a distributed network for decoding trace data provided by any telecommunication network element, wherein the trace data for a particular telecommunication network element is produced by a tracer and is comprised of a plurality of individual events utilizing one or more telecommunication protocols; an encoder that creates and stores in a file system a plurality of executable CDL programs used to decode the trace data, any particular telecommunication protocol being defined by one or more said CDL programs; a plurality of client workstations connected to the distributed network wherein each of the said workstations can access one or more application servers, each said application server having a CDL and signature based decoder engine that is capable of invoking one or more of said executable CDL programs to decode the trace data; and a graphical user interface for each of said plurality of client workstations that receives an output from said CDL and signature based decoder engine and displays the decoded results in a consistent format across all said tracers whose trace data is decodable by said software tool.