Patent ID: 7580998

Claim:
A method implemented by a network management hardware server of a network for describing a problem in the network, the network comprising a plurality of network entities, the method comprising: defining a service as a channel, from an originating network entity to a destination network entity, modulated by a dither tone specific to said channel, said originating network entity and said destination network entity belonging to said plurality of network entities, said service being carried by a path in the network; selecting a subset of alarms associated with said service, the subset of alarms being selected from a list of alarms in the network; grouping alarms in the subset of alarms associated with said service in a number of groups of alarms, each group of alarms being associated with said service and with a respective network entity from among said plurality of network entities; ordering the groups of alarms according to a sequence in which they appear in a traversal of the path of the service in the network; and transforming each alarm in each group of alarms into a problem description for the service.