Service performance correlation (SPC) and service fault correlation (SFC) for managing services transported over circuit-oriented and connectionless networks

Described are a system and method for managing a service transported over a transport network. Service traffic is transmitted from a first network element to a second network element over a transport network. If one of the network elements detects a condition occurring in the transport network, the network element determines each service affected by the condition. Service traffic performance is measured at each of the first and second network elements. Each network element correlates its measure service traffic performance and the service to produce a performance of service (PoS) service metric. Each network element transmits its measured PoS service metric to the other network element over a service management channel. This enables each network element to correlate both performance (SPC) and fault (SFC) for both near and far end service metrics and enables a complete end to end service definition in support of a service level agreement (SLA).