Patent ID: 7548980

Claim:
An enhanced network management system comprising: a connection to a wide area network, the connection configured to receive management information via a plurality of virtual connections from a corresponding plurality of data communication nodes; wherein each node is configured to monitor equipment fault information for customer owned equipment and service level information for provider owned connections; wherein each data communication node couples a particular local area network to the wide area network; wherein the management information transmitted from each of the plurality of data communication nodes includes service level information for a transparent connection between the local area network associated with the data communication node and the wide area network, the transparent connection being intermediate between the wide area network and the local area network, the transparent connection carrying encapsulated data traffic between the local area network and the wide area network, the management information further including equipment failure information for a bridging node configured to generate the encapsulated data traffic; wherein the management information, when presented to a customer, allows the customer to differentiate between network outages caused by customer equipment failures and provider service events.