: this document presents a generic model capturing the essential structural and behavioral characteristics of network components in the light of fault management. The generic model is described by means of UML notations, namely class diagrams, sequence diagrams and instance diagrams. The model covers both circuit-based and packet-based networks. Technologyspecific models must be derived from this model in order to be used by a fault diagnosis module. We also present how we compiled the model to obtain rules for a Viterbi distributed diagnoser, which has been demonstrated on an SDH platform.