Methods for IT network representation and associated computer program products

A method of performing fault diagnosis in an IT network having passive elements at a physical layer and automatically discoverable active elements at routing- and switching-layers, comprising:

• using a combined logical representation of the IT network produced by (a) running an auto-discovery tool and obtaining a representation of automatically discoverable elements from the auto-discovery tool and by (b) inserting the passive elements into the representation between the automatically discovered elements, said combined logical representation modeling the IT network with its automatically discoverable active elements and passive elements that are not addressable by a network address and not automatically discoverable;
• locating a fault down to the switching layer in response to a fault detection;
• indicating, as a result of the fault-diagnosis method, possible physical-layer elements responsible for the fault, based on the known fault location at the switching layer and information from the combined logical IT-network representation which passive elements are located between routing- or switching-layer elements at the switching-layer fault location.

A computer program product in the form of a non-transitory machine-readable medium with program code stored on it comprising:

• wherein the program code is arranged to enable a user to carry out a method, when executed on a computer system, of extending a discoverable-elements IT-network representation by passive elements, said method comprising:
• using the logical discoverable-elements representation which includes automatically discoverable active elements and a discoverable-elements topology, produced by running a network auto-discovery tool;
• manually inserting, by means of a network-element editor, representations of not automatically discoverable elements between automatically discovered elements into said discoverable-elements representation, thereby creating a combined logical representation which models the IT network with its automatically discoverable elements and passive elements that are not addressable by a network address and not automatically discoverable.