Fault Detection and Notification

The purpose of fault management is to detect, isolate, notify and correct faults encountered in the network. Network devices are capable of alerting management stations when a fault occurs on the systems. An effective fault management system consists of several subsystems. Fault detection is accomplished when the devices send SNMP trap messages, SNMP polling, remote monitoring (RMON) thresholds and syslog messages. A management system alerts the end user when a fault is reported and corrective actions can be taken.

Fault detection and monitoring of network elements can be expanded from the device level to the protocol and interface levels. For a network environment , fault monitoring can include Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), fault indications on physical interfaces and so forth.