A new hybrid alarm correlation scheme for MPLS-enabled backbone networks

As current backbone network evolution involves replacing today's multiple networks with a single global multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-enabled backbone over an intelligent optical IP-based core network, alarm correlation becomes critical for fault management system (FMS) to monitor network health, performance, and to quickly identify and resolve operational problems. In this paper, we propose a hybrid technique to efficiently correlate these MPLS alarms to other equipment and service alarms, including event aggregation, rule-based method, and codebook approach. The hybrid technique combines the advantages of small size codebooks and simple expert rules for correlation at each level of the hierarchy. Extensive testing results obtained from real-world network experiments have been reported to demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed correlation scheme.