Recovery from multiple faults in a communications network

A communications network fault recovery management system comprising:

• an alarm signal input configured to receive an alarm signal from each of a plurality of faults in the communications network, each alarm signal comprising a respective alarm descriptor;
• a metric calculation element configured to:
• i. receive each alarm descriptor;
• ii. analyze each alarm descriptor to identify a possible root cause of the respective alarm signal;
• iii. provide a root cause metric for the identified possible root cause, the metric being indicative of a difficulty of repairing the respective fault;
• iv. determine a service impact caused to the communications network by the respective fault;
• v. provide a service impact metric indicative of the service impact;
• vi. combine the root cause metric and the service impact metric to generate an alarm metric;
• and
• vii. rank the alarm signals in dependence on their respective alarm metrics;
• and
• a fault repair control apparatus configured to generate and output a fault repair control signal configured to cause the fault having the highest ranked alarm metric to be repaired first,

A non-transitory data carrier having computer readable instructions embodied therein for providing access to resources available on a processor, the computer readable instructions comprising instructions to cause the processor to perform a method of recovery from multiple faults in a communications network, wherein the instructions cause the processor to:

• a. receive an alarm signal from each of a plurality of faults in the communications network, each alarm signal comprising a respective alarm descriptor;
• b. for each alarm signal received:
• i. analyze the respective alarm descriptor to identify a possible root cause of the alarm signal;
• ii. provide a root cause metric for the identified possible root cause, the metric being indicative of a difficulty of repairing the respective fault;
• iii. determine a service impact caused to the communications network by the respective fault;
• iv. provide a service impact metric indicative of the service impact;
• and
• v. combine the root cause metric and the service impact metric to generate an alarm metric;
• c. rank the alarm signals in dependence on their respective alarm metrics;
• and
• d. cause the fault having the highest ranked alarm metric to be repaired first,