Fault Management for Networks with Link-State Routing Protocols

For network fault management, we present a new technique that is based on on-line monitoring of networks with link-state routing protocols, such as OSPF and integrated IS-IS. Our approach employs an agent that monitors the on-line information of link-state database of the network, analyzes the events generated from the network faults for the event correlation, and detects and localizes the faults. 

The fault management procedure is based on the available information directly from the routing protocols, and it detects and localizes the faults very quickly. Furthermore, the normal operations of the network under management is una®ected, and there is no additional bandwidth consumption from the managed network, since the agent operates in a completely passive mode, never sends any routing or probing messages to the network, nor requires additional equipment in the network to trigger and manage alarms. 

We apply our method to a real network topology of CERNET(China Education and Research Network) with various types of network faults. Experimental results show that our approach can detect and localize the faults in a timely manner yet without disrupting the normal network operations.