Patent ID: 7176792

Claim:
A method for identifying faults in a network that has generated a plurality of fault alarms, the method comprising: generating a plurality of object/alarm pairs, each pair comprising a respective one of the fault alarms and a respective network object responsible for that fault alarm; assigning a respective identification vector to each respective object/alarm pair of the plurality of object alarm pairs; processing the plurality of object/alarm pairs in dependence upon a set of network fault alarm propagation rules to generate for each respective object/alarm pair an alarm propagation vector that identifies that object/alarm pair together with any other object/alarm pairs from the plurality of object/alarm pairs whose alarm may potentially have arisen as a result of that object/alarm pair; processing the plurality of alarm propagation vectors to determine which object/alarm pairs have alarm propagation vectors that are not sub vectors of any of the alarm propagation vectors of the other object/alarm pairs; and identifying any object/alarm pairs thus determined as being linked to potential root causes of network problems.