Network Management: Assessing Internet Network-Element Fault Status Using Neural Networks

by Post, David L.

This thesis explores the implementation of a neural network for analysis and decision-making purposes within the realm of network management and serves as a stepping stone toward a solution for a much larger problem. The thesis will discuss the current landscape of network management software and explore the possible benefits of a neural network augmented solution, test the efficacy of a neural network in several scenarios where it must classify network element performance data, and compare these results against more familiar linear regression methods. Results showed that the neural network was far superior at classifying the results. However, the general applicability of these results is not yet known since the dataset used was from a single commercial Internet Service Provider.