Patent ID: 7912055

Claim:
A method for operating on a system containing a plurality of components communicating using a multicast communication protocol, the method comprising the steps of: representing, in a non-user acceptable manner, selected ones of the plurality of components in a model on one or more computers, the relationship among the components and the associated with the communication protocols; wherein the step of representing the at least one communication protocol comprises the steps of creating at least one non-specific representation of the multicast protocol selected from the group consisting of: MulticastGroup, PIMSgEntry, PIMSourceG, PIMStarG, MulticastEndPoint, PIMInterface, IGMPInterface, MulticastService, MulticastSource, MulticastTree, PIMHop, IGMPNetwork, MSDPSession and MultcastReducancyGroup; and creating at least one non-specification representation of relations along which the events propagate amongst the multicast protocol, wherein the representations of relations are selected from the group consisting of: SendsVia, ReceivesVia, Sources/SourcedBy, ConnectedSystem, ConsistsOf, ConnectedTo, AccessedVia, HostServices, HostedBy, ComposedOf, part of, ReportsToService, ReportedByNetwork, SendsTo, ReceivedFromand LayeredOver; determining a mapping between a plurality of events and a plurality of observable events occurring among the selected components, wherein the mapping is represented as a value associating each event with each observable event, and performing the system operation in conjunction with the relationship between the events and observable events.