Patent ID: 7583605

Claim:
A method of identifying potential failure points between a layer two asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network and a layer one Synchronous Optical Network (SONET), the method comprising: receiving, by a network evaluation system, a first set of circuit identifiers of inter-nodal links of the layer two ATM network, the first set of circuit identifiers including inter-nodal link endpoints; receiving, by the network evaluation system, a second set of circuit identifiers associated with elements of the layer one SONET network, the second set of circuit identifiers include identifiers associated with elements of a plurality of different facility SONET rings; correlating, by the network evaluation system, the second set of circuit identifiers with the first set of circuit identifiers; identifying a subset of the first set of circuit identifiers of those inter-nodal links that are mated with each other and that have redundancy; and matching, by the network evaluation system, the subset of the first set of circuit identifiers to the second set of circuit identifiers to identify single point of failure elements in the layer one SONET network and single point of failure elements in the layer two ATM network including interface elements and add drop multiplexer elements.