Patent ID: 7519006

Claim:
A network processing device, comprising: circuitry configured to decrement time to live values of received traffic prior to routing the traffic; the circuitry configured to analyze the time to live values to identify those time to live values that are decremented below a predefined threshold; if one of the decremented values are identified as being below the predefined threshold, the circuitry configured to extract from a corresponding packet of the traffic a timestamp inserted by a source endpoint, wherein the timestamp indicates when the corresponding packet was transmitted from the source endpoint; the circuitry configured to identify a receipt time for the corresponding packet, the receipt time indicating when the corresponding packet was received at the network processing device; the circuitry configured to determine a difference between the extracted timestamp and the identified receipt time; and the circuitry configured to piggyback the determined difference in an unused field of a packet expiration notice that is generated for expired packets, the packet expiration notice corresponding to the expired packet, wherein the network processing device utilizes the packet expiration notice for communicating the determined difference back to an originating source of the corresponding packet.