Patent ID: 7697452

Claim:
A method in a management apparatus for classifying congestion paths among a plurality of paths between measurement nodes, the method comprising: receiving measurement data units each indicating an origin node, a destination node, and a sent time and a received time in received packets from the measurement nodes, arranging the measurement data units of the same origin node in order of sent time, extracting at least one pair of measurement data units which are temporally adjacent and which have an interval time between the sent times of the adjacent measurement data units, the interval time being shorter than a threshold time, arranging the measurement data units of the same destination node in order of the received time, extracting at least one pair of measurement data units which are temporally adjacent and which have an interval time between the received times of the adjacent measurement data units, the interval time being shorter than the threshold time, calculating a plurality of packet delay values based on differences between the sent times and the received times for the extracted measurement data units, and classifying the congestion paths based on the packet delay values.