Patent ID: 7916664

Claim:
A method for determining peering relationships of autonomous systems at an Internet exchange point, the method comprising: identifying a plurality of autonomous systems participating in the Internet exchange point ;selecting a vantage autonomous system from the plurality of autonomous systems; determining that no packet tracing server is available within the vantage autonomous system by a computer processor; identifying a packet tracing server by a computer processor in a second autonomous system located a single hop from the vantage autonomous system, the second autonomous system not participating in the Internet exchange point; identifying an IP address in a target autonomous system that is another of the plurality of autonomous systems participating in the Internet exchange point by a computer processor; performing a packet trace from packet tracing server to the IP address by the processor of a packet tracing server; determining whether the vantage autonomous system and the target autonomous system have a peer relationship at the Internet exchange point based on whether the packet trace traverses the Internet exchange point by a computer processor.