Designing expert systems for real-time diagnosis of self-correcting networks

Abstract

The authors discuss design issues that they have encountered during an investigation of expert systems for network management that they believe to be generic to the real-time diagnosis of self-correcting networks. By real-time they mean that the diagnostic system must keep pace with a dynamic process, that is, the flow of alarms from intelligent network elements. The objective is to present the operator with a set of recommended actions rather than large volumes of raw alarm data. They outline the general requirements of such a system and then suggest how each can be addressed using an expert-system approach.