System and method for fault isolation in a packet switching network

摘要

A system and method for fault isolation in a packet switching network, wherein a network element may be categorized as faulty when the network element is identified as a point-of-congestion in the network. One such system can be broadly summarized by a representative communication system that incorporates a fault isolating element to monitor multiple network elements. The fault isolating element includes components such as a database of data flow paths that exist in the plurality of network elements, a data gathering element that is configured to collect performance information related to one or more network elements, and an analyzer element that uses the performance information collected by the data gathering element to identify one or more network elements as points of congestion.

主权项

1. A communication system comprising:
a network comprising a plurality of network elements; and a fault isolating element communicatively coupled to the plurality of network elements, the fault isolating element comprising a database of data flow paths between ones of the plurality of network elements, the fault isolating element configured to identify a first network element in the plurality of network elements as a point-of-congestion based at least in part on the database of data flow paths, and to ignore, when identifying the first network element as the point-of-congestion, any independent network element in the plurality of network elements, where the independent network element is a single data terminating network element connected to a single network element with no other network element in the plurality of network elements connected to it.