Patent ID: 8924572

Claim:
A method for identifying the topology of a network, comprising: capturing, via a monitoring probe, data packets from network interfaces; identifying messages specific to S1-MME interfaces; identifying GUMMEI parameters in the S1-MME interface messages; creating MME node entries in a network topology list in a monitoring system memory, each of the MME nodes corresponding to a unique GUMMEI value; identifying individual S1-MME interfaces from SCTP associations corresponding to the S1-MME interface messages; linking each individual S 1-MME interface to a particular MME in the network topology list; identifying IP addresses corresponding to an MME endpoint of the SCTP association carrying the S 1-MME interface messages; linking each individual IP address to a particular MME in the network topology list; identifying individual eNodeBs from the SCTP associations corresponding to the S1-MME interface messages; and creating eNodeB entries in the network topology list in the monitoring system memory, each of the eNodeB entries corresponding to a unique SCTP association on the S1-MME interface.