Proactive Network Monitoring
Proactive Network Monitoring
Proactive Network Monitoring
¯ - ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS
communications
network,rule induction, proactive maintenance,machinelearning, databasemining
Sample Size
Weexaminedthe historical records for several months during late 1992 and 1993. These
samples were taken from the complete AT&T network, and covered a significant numberof all
transmission problems encountered. Whencomparedto the billions of transmissions during a
monthand the size of the network, the numberof problemsis quite small. However,from a sam-
piing perspective, wehad a large sample,consisting of tens of thousands.Of these circuits, between
5 and 10%fulfilled our definition of Chronic,that is, they had faults during at least half the time
units during Wb.
Predicting Chronic Circuit Problems
Wenowreturn to the central task, namely,can wepredict chronic problems,that is, problems
that wit1 continue in the immediatefuture? Wewereable to generate rule sets that werepredictive.
Therule set reducesto a set of conditions. If any of the conditions hold, the problemis very likely
to be chronic. The conditions were of the form
¯ X_Featurei> nl
where X_Featurei is a performancefeature based on the numberof time units during which
an event of a type i occurs and r~ is an integer.
Wewill refer to a set of five conditions, of the type described abovethat were generated, as
RulesetO.Anothercondition of a different type wasalso generated. It was of the form
¯ Y_Feature, > m, & Y_Featureb ¯ mb & Y_Featurec ¯ mc
WhereY_Featureis a performancefeature that is not based on the count of time units and m
is an integer.
This condition is weakerthan the other conditions. Wewill refer to the rule set that includes
all the conditions in RulesetOand this last condition as Rulesetl. While the predictive value of
RulesetOis better than Rulesetl, Rulesetl covers a larger portion of the chronic problem. This is
illustrated in Figures 2 and 3.
Figure 2 plots the performanceof these two rule sets over the course of several time periods.
The rule set was induced during a time period whenthe prevalence of chronic problemswas some-
what lower than during other time periods. Thus any solution induced for that time period neces-
sarily wouldbe highly predictive to overcomethe odds of the larger class. Figure 3 plots the per-
80-
60-
Predictive
Performance
40-
20-
0
I I I I
Time
Figure2:. Predictiveperformance
of rule sets.
100
80-
Percentage 60-
of cases
Covered 40-- "’’’’°’°’’’’’°’’’’’
20-
0 I I I I
Tim~
Figure3: Percentageof Chronicproblemscoveredby each rule set.
100,
80-
Pn~dic~ve
Performance60- ¯ .. ’’’-........, ,
and
Percentage40-
".... covemge
Coverage
’’°’’’°°.. °
20- "’°-° .°
°..
"°..
0
l l l I I I I l l
Number
of time units with faults
Figure4: Performance
of Ruleset0.