Patent ID: 8228804

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying a first plurality of metric values of a metric parameter that is used by a routing protocol to select first routes for communication of messages among nodes of a network, each metric value being associated with a corresponding link of a plurality of links of the network, determining, by a network analysis system, a plurality of failure effects based on modifications of the first routes by the routing protocol based on a plurality of hypothetical failure conditions, selecting a hypothetical failure condition based on the plurality of failure effects determining a first network performance measure based on the modification of the first routes by the routing protocol based on the selected hypothetical failure condition of a plurality of hypothetical failure conditions of the network, and determining a second network performance measure based on a proposed second plurality of metric values and corresponding second routes based on the selected hypothetical failure condition of the plurality of hypothetical failure conditions and a modification of one or more select metric values of the first plurality of metric values, and wherein: each failure effect corresponds to a number of link utilizations that exceed a given threshold due to the corresponding hypothetical failure condition the modification of the one or more select metric values is substantially limited to modifications that cause the routing protocol to reduce a number of routes that include the links corresponding to the modified metric values, and if the second network performance is an improvement over the first network performance measure, identifying one or more configuration changes that will enable use of the proposed second plurality of metric values on the plurality of links of the network.