Patent ID: 6970919

Claim:
A method of controlling a network which includes a plurality of network elements connected via a plurality of links, and provides a plurality of communications services to end-users of the network, said method comprising the steps of: creating view-configuration information based on network-configuration information with respect to each of the plurality of communications services such that the view-configuration information is related to the network-configuration information; registering the view-configuration information and the network-configuration information in a database, said registered view-configuration information and registered network-configuration information being further capable of being updated; creating a plurality of communications service-specific views of the network that correspond to respective one of the communications services, wherein each communications service-specific view includes ones of the plurality of networks elements and ones of the plurality of links that are required for providing an associated communications service to the end-users of the network; displaying a selected one or more of the communications service-specific views by presenting each selected view based on the view-configuration information for respective one of the communications services, said selected view including both or either one of a plurality of a physical network configuration of the network and a logical network configuration of the network; providing matches between failure levels and failure labels with respect to different types of failures, the failure levels indicating significance of failures either as physical failures or as communications service failures: and displaying a failure level of a failure occurring in the network in association with the displaying of the selected view.