1. A method of processing data 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 associated with a given state of one of the entities, the object comprising knowledge based reasoning capability for determining whether the entity is in the given state, and the method further comprising the steps of: passing data about the network to the object; and inferring whether the entity is in the given state using the reasoning capability.