Patent ID: 8228818

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying traffic that enters a backbone network via a predetermined ingress point and that is addressed to a predetermined destination via a first route; determining selected traffic as a subset of the traffic addressed to the predetermined destination based on the selected traffic being associated with a multiprotocol label switching based virtual private network; mapping a measurement node into the multiprotocol label switching based virtual private network; diverting the selected traffic from the predetermined ingress point to the measurement node while allowing non-selected traffic to proceed to the predetermined destination without diversion to the measurement node, wherein the diverting of the selected traffic is performed via an advertisement-generated dynamic tunnel from an intelligent route service control processor advertisement of a more preferred route to the predetermined destination of the measurement node; dynamically inserting passive and active probes into the virtual private network traversed by the selected traffic, wherein the mapping of the measurement node enables the active probes to be dynamically mapped into the multiprotocol label switching based virtual private network and enables passive monitoring of every flow in the multiprotocol label switching based virtual private network; forwarding the selected traffic from the measurement node toward any one of a plurality of routing entities comprising the backbone network, wherein the plurality of routing entities are not the predetermined ingress point and the plurality of routing entities are adapted to forward the selected traffic to the predetermined destination; and receiving statistical information regarding the selected traffic from the measurement node that is adapted to intermittently transmit the statistical information regarding the selected traffic.