Patent ID: 8077718
Filing Date: 2011-12-13
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of providing information for managing an autonomous IP network comprised of hosts on which applications execute and exchange IP packets and routers that route the IP packets between the hosts, the method comprising: providing access to flow information about instances of communication between the hosts over the autonomous IP network, the flow information having been captured by the hosts as the communication occurred, and where the hosts are on the edge of the autonomous IP network and are not routers, the flow information comprising a plurality of traffic flows, the traffic flows having been obtained by, for any given host: providing access to information describing the topology of the autonomous IP network, where the information about the topology is based on or comprises routing paths derived from routing information collected from the routers of the autonomous IP network, each routing path comprising two endpoint IP addresses of a pair of the hosts in the autonomous IP network and comprising one or more intermediary IP addresses of routers that routed some of the IP packets between the endpoint IP addresses; and answering queries about the autonomous IP network and the host by using both the collected routes and the collected flows, wherein a query is answered by correlating one or more traffic flows with one or more routing paths describing routes that carried the IP packets corresponding to the one or more traffic flows.