A conceptual framework for network management event correlation and filtering systems

Event correlation is a key functionality of a network management system that is used to determine the root cause of faults in a network, and to filter out redundant and spurious events. A number of event correlation systems have been proposed. The event correlation systems generally combine causal and temporal correlation models with the topology of a network. The power and robustness of the models used and the algorithms developed vary from system to system. However, in the absence of a simple, uniform, and precise presentation of the event-correlation problem, it is impossible to compare their relative power or even analyze them for their properties. In general, causal and temporal-based correlation models have not been rigorously presented or thoroughly investigated. In this paper we formalize the concepts of causal and temporal correlation using a single conceptual framework. We characterize various properties of the framework. We can characterize existing systems based on the formal properties of our framework, and we consider one system as an illustrative example.