Method and apparatus for performing event-driven diagnostics or prognostics of a network behaviour of a hierarchical optical network

An event analyzer for an optical network, wherein the event analyzer is adapted to mine machine learned event patterns within recorded sets of multi-level events representing different hierarchy levels and/or protocol layers of said optical network and is adapted to map determined event patterns to a multi-level network topology of said optical network and/or to a channel connectivity of channels provided via said optical network,

• wherein the event analyzer is further adapted to match within a sequence of observed real-time multi-level target events of said optical network supplied to said event analyzer at least one of the previously determined mined event patterns and to perform a unified cause and effect analysis of network states and/or network components of said optical network for the recognized matching event pattern using the network topology and/or channel connectivity associated with the matching event pattern.

An optical network having at least one network segment,

• wherein each network segment comprises an associated event analyzer adapted to share event patterns determined by the respective event analyzer with other event analyzers to recognize matching event patterns in the same or different network segments and
• adapted to report event patterns determined by the respective event analyzer to a central event analyzer of said optical network to recognize a matching event pattern in the optical network.