Patent ID: 8549139

Claim:
A method for monitoring control signal traffic over a computer network comprising a plurality of routers by a monitoring computer system, the method comprising acts of: receiving, by the monitoring computer system from at least one of the plurality of routers, at least one routing control signal communicated to one or more other routes; storing the at least one routing control signal in a database of the monitoring computer system; retrieving, by the monitoring computer system, at least one routing control signal from the database of the monitoring computer system relevant to at least one subsequently received routing control signal; comparing, by the monitoring computer system, the at least one subsequently received routing control signal with the at least one routing control signal retrieved from the database of the monitoring computer system; and identifying, in response to the act of comparing the at least one subsequently received routing control signal with the at least one routing control signal retrieved from the database by the monitoring computer system, at least one change to a network topology of the computer network; and determining, by the monitoring computer system, that the at least one change to the network topology of the computer network is an anomaly in a routing database of the computer network comprising the plurality of routers.