Patent ID: 7209968

Claim:
A method of recovering management of one or more network elements, said method comprising: communicatively coupling the one or more network elements with at least one a plurality of distributed gateways; communicatively coupling the at least one distributed gateway with at least one gateway monitoring system; communicatively coupling the at least one gateway monitoring system with a central management system; monitoring operation, by the at least one gateway monitoring system, of the plurality of distributed gateways, each of the plurality of distributed gateways responsible for managing the one or more network elements; detecting failure by the at least one gateway monitoring system, of one of the plurality of distributed gateways, wherein the detecting comprises the steps of: means for determining at least one type of the failure, means for distinguishing at least one source of the failure selected from the group consisting of hardware failures, software failures, and communication port failures, means for presenting to the user at least one reason for the failure based on the at least one type of the failure and the at least one source of the failure, means for presenting to the user at least one action that could be taken by the central management system to resolve the at least one failure, and means for receiving at least one selection of the at least one action; receiving a notice of the detected failure from the at least one gateway monitoring system at the central management system; and responsive to said receiving step, recovering, by the central management system, management of the one or more network elements for which the failed one of the plurality of distributed gateways had management responsibility by assigning management responsibility to at least one other of the plurality of distributed gateways.