Network operation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11336534-B2
Application number	US-201615562682-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 30, 2016
Priority date	Mar 31, 2015
Publication date	May 17, 2022
Grant date	May 17, 2022

Abstract

A method of operating a communications network is disclosed. In order to manage a network, it is first necessary to establish the state the network is in. This is difficult in practice because the network operational data stored and transmitted in the network takes a myriad of forms owing to the variety of suppliers and types of network equipment. There is a need to distil that network operational data down to aggregate network operational data which can be taken to provide an indication of the state of the network which is of a manageable size, and to which network management apparatus can react by sending control commands to the network. The problem of generating aggregate network operational data is tackled by identifying the type of each attribute found in each network operational data item, and classifying the network operational data items in a manner which takes account of the identified types and thus provides network aggregate data which more accurately reflects the operational state of the network. This in turn leads to the network management apparatus controlling the network to operate in a more efficient manner than has hitherto been possible.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of operating a communications network comprising:
receiving a plurality of network operational data items relating to the operation of said communications network, each of those network operational data items comprising one or more attributes, each attribute comprising a value for that attribute;
automatically assigning a statistical data type to the values of one attribute according to a statistical data type classification scheme in which values are one of nominal, ordinal and quantitative by statistically analyzing a plurality of the values of the attribute;
classifying said network operational data items using type-specific processing which depends upon whether the automatically assigned statistical data type to said attribute is nominal, ordinal or quantitative; and
automatically operating the communications network to apply common class-specific treatment in response to network operational data items in one or more classes, wherein common class-specific treatment includes giving network elements, traffic or events represented by network operational data items assigned to a same class, a same level of priority, and/or handling them with a same countermeasure.

2. The method according to claim 1 further comprising comparing said plurality of values to one or more specialised patterns in order to find the type of the values of the attribute as being a specialist data type.

3. The method according to claim 2 further comprising receiving a specification of a specialised pattern for a specialist data type from a user.

4. The method according to claim 2 further comprising receiving a specification of one or more operations suitable for processing values matching said specialised pattern.

5. The method according to claim 1 wherein said type-specific processing comprises computing a type-specific similarity or distance measure between two of the network operational data items.

6. A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a program or suite of programs executable by a processor to perform the method of claim 1 .

7. The method according to claim 1 wherein
the attributes of the network operational data items include data comprising a sequence of bytes representing a sequence of characters; and
the processing of the network operational data items does not rely on the network operational data items being in accordance with a predetermined schema.

8. The method according to claim 1 wherein
automatically operating the communications network to apply the common class-specific treatment includes giving network traffic, represented by the network operational data items assigned to the same class, a same quality of service.

9. The method according to claim 1 further comprising
determining that a network element or network traffic is malicious,
wherein automatically operating the communications network to apply the common class-specific treatment includes handling the malicious network element network traffic with a same countermeasure.

10. A method according to claim 1 , wherein statistically analyzing the plurality of the values of at least one of said attributes comprises calculating one or more collective properties of the values, the one or more collective properties being selected from the group comprising:
i) the number of unique values found in the plurality of values of the attribute;
ii) the frequency distribution of the values of the attribute; and
iii) the frequency distribution of the differences between the values of the attribute when ordered.

11. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises:
determining whether the values of the attribute are positive integers; and
using the statistically analysis of the values of the attribute to determine whether the positive integers are nominal, ordinal or quantitative according to the statstical data type classification scheme.

12. Network control apparatus comprising:
a receiver arranged in operation to receive a plurality of network operational data items relating to the operation of said communications network, each of those network operational data items comprising one or more attributes, each attribute comprising a value for that attribute;
a computer system including a non-transitory computer readable medium for storing code and a computer hardware processor for executing the code such that the computer system is configured to at least perform:
a statistical data type identification to automatically assign a statistical data type to the values of one attribute according to a statistical data type classification scheme in which values are one of nominal, ordinal and quantitative by statistically analyzing a plurality of the values the attribute;
a network operational data item classification to classify said network operational data, items into a plurality of classes using type-specific processing which depends upon whether the automatically assigned statistical data type to said attribute is nominal, ordinal or quantitative; and
a network control to automatically operate the communications network to apply common class-specific treatment in response to network operational data items in one or more of said plurality of classes, wherein common class-specific treatment includes giving network elements, traffic or events represented by network operational data items assigned to a same class, a same level of priority, and/or handling them with a same countermeasure.

13. The network control apparatus according to claim 12 wherein
the attributes of the network operational data items include data comprising a sequence of bytes representing a sequence of characters; and
the computer system is not pre-configured with data representing a predetermined schema for the network operational data items.

14. The network control apparatus according to claim 12 wherein
automatically operating the communications network to apply in the network control the common class-specific treatment includes giving network traffic, represented by the network operational data items assigned to the same class, a same quality of service.

15. The network control apparatus according to claim 12 wherein
the computer system is further configured to determine that a network element or network traffic is malicious, and
automatically operating the communications network in the network control to apply the common class-specific treatment includes handling the malicious network element network traffic with a same countermeasure.

16. The network control apparatus according to claim 12 , wherein statistical analysis of the plurality of the values of the attribute comprises calculation of one or more collective properties of the values, the one or more collective properties being selected from the group comprising:
i) the number of unique values found in the plurality of values of the attribute;
ii) the frequency distribution of the values of the attribute; and
iii) the frequency distribution of the differences between the values of the attribute when ordered.

17. The network control apparatus according to claim 12 , wherein said type-specific processing comprises computing a type-specific similarity or distance measure between two of the network operational data items.

18. The network control apparatus according to claim 12 wherein the computer system is further configured to perform:
a determination of whether the values of the attribute are positive integers; and
a determination of whether the positive integers are nominal, ordina

Assignees

• British Telecomm

Inventors

• Turner Michael
• Healing Alexander

Classifications

• H04L41/142 Primary

  using statistical or mathematical methods · CPC title

• H04L63/20

  for managing network security; network security policies in general (filtering policies H04L63/0227) · CPC title

• H04L41/18

  Delegation of network management function, e.g. customer network management [CNM] · CPC title

• H04L63/1408

  by monitoring network traffic (monitoring network traffic per se H04L43/00) · CPC title