Enhanced network management system

A network management system comprising:

• a data network report collector for providing analysis of management information, providing notification of equipment failures, and providing administration of service level agreements for customers;
• and
• a data router having an interface coupled to a wide area network;
• wherein data collected via the interface includes the management information regarding a service level for a plurality of provider owned transparent connections for carrying data traffic between a plurality of local area networks and the wide area network;
• wherein the transparent connections are situated between the plurality of local area networks and the wide area network;
• wherein the management information further includes equipment fault information for a bridging node configured to generate encapsulated data traffic;
• and
• wherein the management information, when presented to a customer, allows the customer to differentiate between network outages caused by customer equipment failures and provider service events.

A method comprising:

• collecting management information for a transparent connection carrying encapsulated data traffic, the management information further including equipment failure information for a bridging node configured to generate the encapsulated data traffic;
• identifying the equipment failure information using the collected management information;
• separately identifying service provider service level information using the collected management information;
• and
• presenting the service level information and detected equipment failures to a customer to allow the customer to differentiate between network outages caused by customer equipment failures and provider service events.

A network management system comprising:

• a report collector for providing analysis of management information, providing notification of equipment failures, and providing administration of service level agreements for customers, wherein the management information includes
• equipment failure information for a bridging node configured to generate encapsulated data traffic;
• and
• a middleware server configured to collect management information from a plurality of data communication nodes for a transparent Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connection between a wide area network and a plurality of local area networks, each local area network being associated with a corresponding data communication node, the management information being collected for the transparent Digital Subscriber Line via a Frame Relay network, the middleware server being further configured to forward the collected management information to the report collector, wherein, when presented to a customer, the collected management information allows the customer to differentiate between network outages caused by customer equipment failures and provider service events.