Patent ID: 8055742

Claim:
A network management system for creating and implementing a service on a network, said network management system comprising: means for acquiring policy rules comprising service rules which create the service and implementation rules which implement the service; means for inferring said policy rules to determine commands corresponding to said policy rules; and means for transmitting the determined commands to network elements of the network, wherein said implementation rules for implementing the service comprise technology rules and equipment rules, wherein the inferring means correlates the service rules with the technology rules, wherein the technology rules determine technology to use in the implementation of the service based on attributes of the service and equipment in the network, wherein the service is defined by the service rules independently of the technology and specification of the network equipment, wherein the inferring means adapts the technology rules using the equipment rules based on an equipment type, wherein the technology rules specify which protocol to use for the service based on the attributes of the equipment in the network, wherein the equipment rules model how to select the technology rules based on the attributes of the equipment, and wherein the technology rules are different from the equipment rules.