Managing Networks — The FCAPS Model

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Learning Objectives

  • Name the five FCAPS categories of network management
  • Sort a real-world scenario into the right FCAPS bucket
  • Build a tiny fault-checker over a list of devices

The Five Buckets

Everything a network admin does falls into one of five buckets, FCAPS: Fault (detect/fix problems), Configuration (keep settings correct), Accounting (track usage), Performance (keep it fast), Security (keep it safe). When you're not sure what 'kind' of task something is, ask: which of these five is it protecting?

Practice — A Tiny Fault Checker

Real fault management means scanning device status and flagging anything down. Here's the same idea in plain Python over a list of device dictionaries.

devices = [
    {"name": "core-sw1", "status": "up"},
    {"name": "edge-rtr2", "status": "down"},
    {"name": "access-sw3", "status": "up"},
]

def find_faults(devices):
    return [d["name"] for d in devices if d["status"] == "down"]

print("Devices down:", find_faults(devices))

📝 Exercise: Build a FCAPS Sorter

Write a function classify_task(task_text) that looks at a short string describing an admin task and returns which FCAPS letter it belongs to: 'F', 'C', 'A', 'P', or 'S'. Use simple keyword matching (e.g. 'down', 'crash', 'outage' -> 'F'; 'password', 'firewall', 'unauthorized' -> 'S'; 'slow', 'latency', 'bandwidth' -> 'P'; 'config', 'backup', 'template' -> 'C'; 'usage', 'billing', 'report' -> 'A'). Test it against the sample_tasks list.

code.py
Output

            

        

    


    

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