Patent ID: 7260645

Claim:
A method facilitating the testing of a path to a destination network, the path including at least one intermediate system between a source network and the destination network, wherein the at least one intermediate system supports a communications protocol allowing for hop-limited packets and the transmission of error messages in response to expired, hop-limited packets, the method comprising: identifying a target intermediate system in a path to a destination network wherein the identifying step comprises: probing a path by transmitting a series of hop-limited probe packets to the destination network until detection of an event indicating the end of the path has been reached, said probe packets in the series configured to expire at an intermediate system in the path after a successively increasing number of hops; recording the computer network address of the responding intermediate system(s) in association with the number of hops associated with the probe packet(s) triggering the response(s); and selecting the intermediate system associated with the largest number of hops; and testing the path in relation to at least one metric using at least one hop-limited test packet, wherein the at least one hop-limited test packet is addressed to the destination network, but configured to expire at the target intermediate system in the path.