Patent ID: 7633879

Claim:
A method of analyzing the path of incoming messages from a near end device, said messages originating at a far end device, said method comprising the steps of: negotiating a far end traceroute no-op process with the far end device, sending a no-op media packet from the near end device to said far end device, said packet instructing the far end device to initiate an action, initiating a trace operation from the far end device utilizing a series of TTL packets with different Time To Live (TL) values the trace operation comprising: until a counter N reaches a predetermined value, repeatedly sending one of the TTL packets from the far end, if a return packet corresponding to the one of the TTL packets is received by the near end in a timely manner, recording a result, and if the return packet is not received by the near end in a timely manner, incrementing the counter N, and analyzing the return packets from said TTL packets to analyze said path, wherein the return packets comprise a listing of IP addresses reached by each of the different TL values.