Patent ID: 7619989

Claim:
Apparatus for detecting possible misconfigurations in a communication system, the apparatus comprising: a listener configured to passively collect routing information from routing protocol messages distributed by one or more routing elements in a communication system, the collected routing information indicating electronic addresses that are reachable in the communication system; and a routing configuration validation module configured to detect possible misconfigurations in the communication system by comparing the collected routing information with information indicating whether electronic addresses in an address space of the communication system have been assigned for use in the communication system, and detecting a possible misconfiguration of an electronic address where (i) the collected routing information indicates that the electronic address is reachable in the communication system and the information indicating whether the electronic addresses in the address space of the communication system have been assigned for use in the communication system indicates that the electronic address has not been assigned for use in the communication system, or (ii) the information indicating whether the electronic addresses in the address space of the communication system have been assigned for use in the communication system indicates that the electronic address has been assigned for use in the communication system and the collected routing information does not indicate that the electronic address is reachable in the communication system.