Fcaps

The FCAPS Model

The FCAPS model is a collection of rules governing five different and distinct, yet still interconnected areas of network management. The FCAPS model takes the ideas of network management for a large scale enterprise and splits them into five hierarchical layers. These five layers are Fault management, Configuration management, Accounting management, Performance management and Security management. The FCAPS model is network-centric in that it is viewed from the bottom up, mostly because organizations that use the FCAPS model are typically large enterprises and providers of data services; essentially, no network means no customers.

Fault Management

Fault management is the component of network management where network administrators or managers will work to detect, isolate and resolve problems. The purpose of fault management is to provide a certain level of fault tolerance and to keep the network running within acceptable standards [ (FCAPS-A Quick Introduction, 2012) ]. In general, fault management systems will poll the managed objects (MO’s) within the management information base (MIB) and return any potential errors to the network manager. Other factors of fault management that cannot be overlooked are having a good alarm and ticketing system. These tools are crucial to both bringing problems to the attention of a network manager and also for tracking the status of a problem from discovery to resolution [ (Clem, 2007) ].

Often times a network management system will use a color coding schema including green, yellow and blue. Green would mean that the network segments being represented were operating as expected, yellow might mean that there are potential problems within the network and red means that a network device or devices has failed. Depending on the network design a yellow condition may mean that single device has failed, however redundancies allow the network to continue to function. In this example red would likely...