Abstract: A method of processing data such as alarms from a communications network, the network comprising a plurality of network entities, having predetermined states of operation, the method comprising the step of creating an object (88) associated with a given state of one of the entities, such as a fault state. The object comprises knowledge based reasoning capability (89) such as rules for determining whether the entity is in the given state, and the method further comprises the steps of: passing data about the network, such as alarms and events, to the object; and inferring whether the entity is in the given fault state using the rules. This enables faster correlation of alarms and simpler development and maintenance of the rules.