Abstract: The invention relates to a monitoring system for a communication network configured to support at least a portion of a network slice, wherein the communication network comprises a plurality of sub-networks configured to support at least a sub-portion of the portion of the network slice. The network entity comprises a communication interface configured to communicate with a plurality of sub-network monitoring units, each comprising at least one monitoring probe configured to monitor at least one performance measure of the sub-portion of the portion of the network slice, wherein the monitoring probes of the plurality of sub-network monitoring units define a set of monitoring probes; and a processor configured to select one or more monitoring probes from the set of monitoring probes for monitoring the portion of the network slice of the communication network.

Abstract: The present disclosure relates to a slice monitor for monitoring slices programmed by a slice owner and deployed by an orchestrator in the control and data planes of a communication network. The slice monitor comprises multiple databases containing different types of information, selects the probes to monitor each slice in the control plane or the data plane and instantiates the selected probes as well as a single-slice monitoring device specific to each slice. For optimization, the slice monitor configures the content of its databases by communicating through multiple interfaces with different actors such as the slice owner, the owner of the orchestrator and the owner of itself. Using alarm handlers and a reconfiguration engine, the slice monitor together with the single-slice monitoring device can detect and compensate for possible violations in the service-level agreement by reconfiguring the slice. If the compensation fails, the slice monitor requests the orchestrator for reconfiguration.