Implementing enhanced network maintenance for transaction access services: tools and applications

We describe the design and implementation of automated methodologies and tools that facilitate the implementation of an enhanced maintenance process in order to provide improved quality of service offered to the customers for the transaction access services (TAS) network. The emphasis of our work is placed on the identification, filtering and correlation of event occurrences that indicate problems that do not necessarily generate alarmed conditions on the conventional network management systems, and on the proactive service/fault management and detection based on dynamically defined violations of the base-lined performance profiles. Such an approach enhances considerably the network management and maintenance process, by identifying possible situations/incidents that may affect the network performance, and by correlating those incidents to the potentially affected elements, services and customer applications.