Patent ID: 8014322

Claim:
A system comprising: a graphical user interface (GUI) running on or associated with a first node connected to a network which includes an intermediate node in a signaling path that connects a source endpoint with a destination endpoint, the intermediate node comprising a mixer or a translator device; a stream discovery agent (SDA) associated with the intermediate node, the SDA being operable to convert call-based addresses to stream-based addresses and to return characteristics of an Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) flow in the signaling path responsive to a first request from the GUI; an RTP management agent (RMA) associated with the intermediate node, the RMA being operable to return Management Information Base (MIB) information which comprises statistics associated with a specified RTP stream in the RTP flow in response to a second request from the GUI, the statistics including source and destination Internet Protocol (IP) sockets, and a list of contributing source information for all RTP streams that have contributed to the specified RTP stream; and wherein the GUI is operable to use the MIB information to trace back to one or more additional intermediate nodes in the signaling path to obtain additional statistics associated with the recently contributing RTP streams in the RTP flow, the GUI being further operable to display a graphical image of the signaling path from the source endpoint to the destination endpoint, the GUI further allowing a user of the first node to selectively display the characteristics obtained from the first logical entity and/or the information obtained from the second logical entity, including statistics associated with each of the RTP streams that have contributed to the specified RTP stream.