Northern Telecom Limited

Nortel Networks Corporation

Peter Jamieson Tattersfield

Nigel Lawrence Bragg

Clive Colin Hayball

A communications network, eg a distributed network, comprises a plurality of distributed physical resources in the form of components, assemblies of components, and systems based on components and composites. A network management system of such a network comprises an application level which represents the functionality of a plurality of different composites being hardware and/or software components of different proprietary manufacture and different function capability, and an implementation level which implements control of the composites. The application level is sub-divided into a plurality of application level elements each of which correspond to a function capability of a composite or system, a system being a highest level of composite. The implementation level is sub-divided into a plurality of implementation level elements each of which represents a system, a composite or a component. The internal structure of the elements within the application controller and implementation level corresponds to internal architectures of the systems and composites. As the communications network is assembled from a plurality of different components and composites, the network management system can also be assembled using predetermined constructions of composite controllers and component controllers which correspond to specific composites or specific components within those composites.

Communications network having management system architecture supporting reuse

A management base of a communications network manager is constructed using object oriented techniques. A network comprises a plurality of physical resources in the form of components and assemblies of components, which are distributed across the network. A management system for the network is constructed in an evolutionary manner by representing an overall functionality of the network by an application model in which each function of the network is modeled independently of its implementation, decomposing the application model into an implementation model in which every function represented in the application model is represented in the implementation model, representing the application model as a plurality of objects, representing the implementation model as another plurality of objects, connecting the objects of the application model and implementation model together to obtain a combined object model, and constructing a management base according to the combined object model.

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Chelmsford, United Kingdom

Peter Jamieson Tattersfield