Patent ID: 8468228

Claim:
A storage device comprising a non-transitory, computer-readable network management system for managing a communication network comprising network equipment, said equipment having associated interfaces, the network management system comprising: a base layer for proxying said interfaces and for decoupling said interfaces from management functions, said base layer comprising distributed process executors to execute in a distributed manner processes concerning management of said network, each process executor comprising at least one of a workflow engine, a rule engine, and a combination thereof; wherein said base layer comprises: a sub-layer of protocol adapters for interfacing a set of network equipment offering a given protocol; and a sub-layer of resource proxy modules, each said proxy module providing a representation of the configuration of given network equipment according to a defined information model and configured for aligning said representation of the configuration of given network equipment by at least one operation selected from the group of: performinq all the management actions on said network by invoking operation through at least one associate protocol adapter; receiving at said resource proxy modules all the notifications sent by said network equipment; and performing a periodical verification of alignment between the representation of the network equipment and said network equipment; a support layer superposed to said base layer and comprising a plurality of agents coordinating operation of said base layer in order to support distributed management functionalities; a database, stored on a computer-readable medium, storing instruction information; and a manager application configured to manage distribution of said instruction information from said database to at least one of said base layer and said support layer, wherein said distributed management functionalities include FCAPS (Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, Security) functionalities, wherein at least two of said agents are hosted on different machines, wherein said layers are configured to perform respective functions based on said instruction information, wherein said layers are configured to modify respective functions in response to said instruction information, wherein said plurality of agents communicate information indicative of a status of said plurality of agents to said manager application, said information indicative of a status comprising information regarding current load conditions, and wherein, in response to said status information, said manager application moves at least one agent to a different machine.