Integrated network management for real-time operations

An approach to integrated network management that eliminates the need for interface protocol conformance and provides applications that seamlessly isolate and resolve faults in the entire network is described. The approach uses off-the-shelf artificial intelligence tools and open-architecture client/server workstation technology. A sophisticated tool similar to a fourth-generation language, called the Universal Device Interface Generator, is used to develop and support agent interface modules very quickly and easily. This tool is used to provide a manager of managers, called the ALLINK Operations Coordinator (AOC), that can interface to virtually any existing element management system. With the AOC, information from all of the subnetwork managers is gathered and correlated, the results of this correlation are presented to the human operators in a uniform fashion, and any other interactions between the subnetwork managers and the human operators are also performed in a uniform fashion.<>