Operational network data, management data such as customer care call logs and
equipment system logs, is a very important source of information for network
operators to detect problems in their networks. Unfortunately, there is lack of
efficient tools to automatically track and detect anomalous events on
operational data, causing ISP operators to rely on manual inspection of this
data. While anomaly detection has been widely studied in the context of network
data, operational data presents several new challenges, including the
volatility and sparseness of data, and the need to perform fast detection
(complicating application of schemes that require offline processing or
large/stable data sets to converge).
To address these challenges, we propose Tiresias, an automated approach to
locating anomalous events on hierarchical operational data. Tiresias leverages
the hierarchical structure of operational data to identify high-impact
aggregates (e.g., locations in the network, failure modes) likely to be
associated with anomalous events. To accommodate different kinds of operational
network data, Tiresias consists of an online detection algorithm with low time
and space complexity, while preserving high detection accuracy. We present
results from two case studies using operational data collected at a large
commercial IP network operated by a Tier-1 ISP: customer care call logs and
set-top box crash logs. By comparing with a reference set verified by the ISP's
operational group, we validate that Tiresias can achieve >94% accuracy in
locating anomalies. Tiresias also discovered several previously unknown
anomalies in the ISP's customer care cases, demonstrating its effectiveness
