Patent ID: 8862996
Filing Date: 2014-10-14
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method for presenting information associated with selected elements in a distributed system, the method comprising the steps of: grouping the elements into one or more autonomous systems; representing attributes of, and relationships between the elements in the one or more autonomous systems as associated configuration non-specific entities; presenting one or more container mapping views; wherein each container mapping view represents one of the one or more autonomous systems and the relationship between the one or more autonomous systems; enabling a selection of one or more layers of an OSI protocol stack; applying a criterion, for each layer selected of the OSI protocol stack, to the one or more container mapping views; extracting at least one characteristics from a characteristic set including attributes of the elements and the relationships between the elements within the one or more autonomous systems associated with the selected criterion, for each selected layer of the OSI protocol stack, and the one or more selected layers of the OSI protocol stack; associating an indicator with each of the one or more container mapping views for indicating additional information associated with the one or more container mapping views; associating the at least one characteristic with regard to a configuration of the distributed system; and graphically presenting the indicator for the one or more container mapping views and relationships between the one or more mapping containers; wherein each indicator for the one or container mapping views enables a user to expand a container mapping view of the at least one container mapping views based on the selection of the at least one layer of the OSI protocol stack; where expanding the container mapping view presents the information associated with the extracted attributes and the relationships between the represented elements of the autonomous system associated with the container mapping view for each selected layer of the OSI protocol stack.