An element of network management, fault management includes the detection of alarms and alerts, test and acceptance, and network recovery. Network elements (NEs) generate alarms and alerts are to indicate catastrophic failures or severe performance degradations.A network management system receives and correlates alarms and alerts from multiple NEs, and perhaps disables a failed port and enables another, or perhaps reroutes traffic around a failed switch or router after testing the alternate route. See also NE and network management.