Patent ID: 7720009

Claim:
A method of determining a topology associated with each of one or more virtual private networks (VPNs) of a network comprising: discovering a plurality of edge routers associated with the network, each edge router including one or more virtual routing and forwarding entities (VRFs); determining one or more route targets (RTs) associated with each of the VRFs, wherein corresponding RTs between two or more VRFs are associated with connectivity between the two or more VRFs via the network; sorting the VRFs into one or more groups based upon the corresponding RTs of the VRFs; identifying a representative VRF (rVRF) for each of the one or more groups of VRFs; sorting the rVRFs into one or more VPNs based on at least one of: one or more RTs indicating a direct connection between two or more rVRFs, or one or more RTs indicating an indirect connection between two or more rVRFs via a connecting VRF; and determining the topology associated with each of the VPNs based on the RTs associated with the rVRFs of each VPN of the network.