Patent ID: 7451230

Claim:
A method for performing, for the benefit of a reference provider having a set of users, connectivity evaluations over a data communication network with respect to at least one provider of interest the method comprising the steps of: selecting a plurality of autonomous systems adapted to form a traffic source or a traffic destination for users of said reference provider through the reference provider, supplying tables of Border Gateway Protocol type containing information on paths available on said data communication network for routing said traffic with regard to the autonomous systems of said plurality of systems, extracting from said tables the paths of Border Gateway Protocol type associated with said at least one provider of interest, by searching the paths that contain the respective number of autonomous system for said at least one provider of interest, extracting for each autonomous system of said plurality of systems, oriented subpaths between each of said autonomous systems and said at least one provider of interest, by identifying for each subpath a respective length in number of hops, identifying for each autonomous system of said plurality of systems a forward traffic volume or a backward traffic volume with regard to the users of said reference provider, determining, for each of said subpaths connectivity contribution as a function of the respective length in number of hops and of the forward traffic volume or the backward traffic volume, determining for each autonomous system of said plurality of systems total connectivity values accumulating the connectivity contributions determined for the oriented subpaths extracted for each of said autonomous systems, and accumulating the total connectivity values determined for the autonomous systems of said plurality of systems, so as to obtain total connectivity values relating to said at least one provider of interest.