Patent ID: 7760735

Claim:
A method for identifying network switches along a path, the method comprising: receiving an address of a source node and an address of a destination node; maintaining topology information for a network; determining whether a current-hop node performs layer-3, layer-2 or sub-layer-2 switching by looking up the network topology information; determining the status of the current-hop node and discovering a next-hop node by querying the current-hop node; setting the next-hop node as the current-hop node; and recording identifiers for all the switches along a path from the source node to the destination node; wherein if the current-hop node performs layer-3 switching, the method further comprises: querying the current-hop node's layer-3 switching table; receiving from the current-hop node an address of the next layer-3 node along the path; identifying an egress interface at the current-hop node; and determining the status of the identified egress interface.