RULE-BASED CONTROL OF A TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK USING THE BLACKBOARD MODEL

A rule-based system has been built for automated control of a telecomm unications network. The system has been tested with a simulation of th e British Telecom trunk network, which it monitors and controls. Knowl edge of network management is encoded as rules within a blackboard sys tem (ARBS). At runtime, a model of the problem and its solution evolve s in a global memory area, i.e. the blackboard. The knowledge-base is divided into separate modules, or knowledge sources, which may be rule -based or procedural. Different rule-based knowledge sources can use d ifferent inference mechanisms, whose merits are compared here. Four di fferent aspects of network control have been addressed, along with the facility to reduce or disable previously issued commands. The delay i n receiving a response to a request for routing information has been s imulated with ARBS, and the intervening period used to perform other r elated tasks.