초록 ▼

A system and method for acknowledging alarms is provided in which alarm acknowledgement information is managed in a distributed fashion by all entities interested in the alarms. In the course of an alarm acknowledgement being transmitted from an entity which generated the alarm acknowledgement back

A system and method for acknowledging alarms is provided in which alarm acknowledgement information is managed in a distributed fashion by all entities interested in the alarms. In the course of an alarm acknowledgement being transmitted from an entity which generated the alarm acknowledgement back to the source of the alarm, each intervening entity records the fact that the alarm has been acknowledged, and sends notifications of this fact to other entities. In this manner, a single acknowledgement is propagated to the entire system. There is no need for a non-volatile store recording alarm acknowledgement information because the information will be present at a large number of entities any one of which can be used to update the information in a temporarily failed entity.

대표청구항 ▼

[ The embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property or privilege is claimed are defined as follows:] [1.]1. In a network comprising a plurality of AGE's (alarm generating entity) which generates alarms and a plurality of interconnected SME's (surveillance management entities) each AGE

[ The embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property or privilege is claimed are defined as follows:] [1.]1. In a network comprising a plurality of AGE's (alarm generating entity) which generates alarms and a plurality of interconnected SME's (surveillance management entities) each AGE in direct communication with a respective one of the SME's, for each {SME,AGE} pair a direction of communication towards the AGE being defined as upstream for that {SME,AGE} pair and a direction of communication away from the AGE being defined as downstream for that {SME,AGE} pair, a method of acknowledging alarms comprising the steps of in respect of each alarm generated by a respective AGE:a) a particular SME generating an alarm acknowledgement to the alarm and passing this to a single SME upstream for the {particular SME, respective AGE} pair;b) in respect of each alarm acknowledgement to the alarm received by an SME, the SME preforming the steps of:recording the alarm acknowledgement;forwarding the alarm acknowledgement upstream to a single SME upstream for the {SME, respective AGE} pair unless the SME is the SME in direct communication with the respective AGE in which case forwarding the alarm acknowledgement upstream to the respective AGE;sending to all SME's which are downstream for the {SME, respective AGE }pair which are interested in the alarm an alarm notification that an alarm acknowledgement has been sent;c) in response to receiving an alarm notification received by an SME:the SME recording the alarm notification; andthe SME sending an alarm notification to all SME's which are downstream for the {SME, respective AGE} pair which are interested in the alarm.