Patent ID: 8010644

Claim:
A method for determining on which routers to deploy a network monitoring service within a communication network for the lowest cost for a selected percentage of a type of overall traffic coverage across the communication network, the method comprising: (a) selecting a percentage of the type of overall traffic across the communication network to be covered by the network monitoring service; (b) initializing all slots within a set of routers by which targeted traffic is switched independent within all points of presence (Pops) within the communication network to have no network monitoring service deployed; (c) calculating prorated costs of adding the network monitoring service to each slot within each router that does not have the network monitoring service deployed for each option of monitoring customer traffic only, monitoring peering traffic only, and monitoring both customer and peering traffic; d) normalizing the calculated prorated costs based on an optimum location for covering consumer traffic, wherein the optimum location comprises one of a gateway-customer interface, a gateway-backbone interface, a backbone-gateway interface, a backbone interface, or a backbone/shared-tenant interface; e) comparing the normalized calculated prorated costs of each slot within each router that does not have the network monitoring service; f) selecting a first slot on a first router with a lowest normalized calculated prorated cost to deploy the network monitoring service; g) calculating the percentage of the type of overall traffic across the communication network deploying the network monitoring service to the selected first slot on the first router; and h) continuing steps (c) through (g) until the percentage of the type of overall traffic across the communication network covered is greater than or equal to the selected percentage of the type of overall traffic coverage across the communication network.