Patent ID: 8090809

Claim:
A computer implemented method to assign nodes in a network to groups of nodes, comprising: observing connection patterns between nodes in the network; identifying nodes with similar connection patterns in the network, wherein the similar connection patterns are based on regular communication with common network end nodes; generating a connectivity graph based on observed connection patterns between nodes, wherein, in the connectivity graph, a vertex denotes a node, and an edge between vertices denotes a one-hop connectivity between the corresponding nodes; grouping the identified nodes into groups based on the connectivity graph; and merging a first group and a second group into a larger group in response to: determining that a similarity measure between the first group and the second group exceeds a user-defined threshold, wherein the similarity measure is based on connection patterns from the first group and the second group, and determining that a first average number of connected host pairs in the first group is within a pre-determined percentage of a second average number of connected host pairs in the second group.