Patent ID: 7583587

Claim:
A method comprising: detecting a discrepancy in operation of an actual network by: supplying trace data that describes the actual network to a network simulator in order for the network simulator to provide an estimate of a simulated network performance of a trace-driven simulation of the actual network, the trace data being collected through operation of the actual network and comprising one or more of network topology data, traffic statistics data, physical medium data, and network operation data of the actual network, wherein the simulated network is: implemented by software to perform traffic load simulation, routing simulation, signal strength simulation, and fault injection simulation of the actual network; and configured to reflect an accurate depiction of the actual network based on the collected trace data of the actual network; and determining the estimate of the simulated network performance differs from an observed network performance of the actual network; and diagnosing a root cause of the discrepancy by injecting one or more of a plurality of faults into the simulated network until the estimate of the simulated network performance approximates the observed actual network performance.