Patent ID: 9485165
Filing Date: 2016-11-01
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method in a network device for performing Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP) based path discovery, the method comprising the steps of: setting a current hopcount to an initial value of one for a TWAMP test session with a destination Internet Protocol (IP) address of another network device that is the reflector for the TWAMP test session; transmitting, by the network device that is the sender for the TWAMP test session, a TWAMP test request packet with the destination IP address and with a hopcount in the TWAMP test request packet set to the current hopcount; receiving an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) time exceeded message by the network device from a transit node; determining that the transit node is the current hopcount away from the network device on a TWAMP end-to-end (E2E) path between the sender and reflector of the TWAMP test session being discovered; adding an IP address of the transit node received in the ICMP time exceeded message to a sequence of IP addresses representing a forward direction path in a set of alternate paths of the TWAMP E2E path; repeating the step of transmitting with the current hopcount incremented by one as compared to the immediately preceding TWAMP test request packet for the TWAMP test session, repeating the method to determine another sequence of IP addresses representing another forward direction path in the set of alternate paths of the TWAMP E2E path; utilizing a corresponding path in the set of alternate paths of the TWAMP E2E path to generate performance metrics based on TWAMP test request and TWAMP test reply messages utilizing the corresponding path, where the corresponding path is a path in the set of alternate paths traversed by the TWAMP test request or the TWAMP test reply message; and storing the performance metrics in a TWAMP path table for each of the set of alternate paths with performance metrics generated from the respective path in the set of alternate paths.