Patent ID: 7801057

Claim:
A method of analyzing a routing table of an IP Gateway for identifying sets of IP addresses communicating through a Gateway, wherein said routing table includes a plurality of routes, wherein each route includes an IP address range including at least one destination IP address, wherein each route is associated with at least one predefined network interface card (NIC) enabling communication over at least one local area network (LAN) between an IP gateway of the routing table and a destination gateway directing to a destination address, said method comprising: identifying critical points in the routing table with a processor, wherein each critical point is an IP address within a Route that represents a routing transition from one destination gateway to another; and defining disjoint zones, wherein each disjoint zone is a set of destination IP addresses, wherein each destination IP address from the routing table is associated with a single disjoint zone, wherein all the destination IP addresses associated with said zone are further associated with the same NIC, and wherein defining of each said disjoint zone is carried out by using said critical points.