Patent ID: 8665752

Claim:
A network modeling method comprising: at a modeling platform, accessing information describing a set of nodes of a communications network, physical links physically connecting the nodes, and logical links logically connecting the nodes using the physical links; at the modeling platform, based on the information, creating a connection group object for each of the physical links and for each of the logical links, each connection group object comprising: a connection representing the link; a first endpoint representing a first node of the set connected to the link; and a second endpoint representing a second node of the set connected to the link; and at a provisioning platform, searching through the connection group objects created by the modeling platform to find supporting logical and physical links and using at least one connection group object to configure an operating behavior of at least one of the nodes of the network; wherein the modeling platform supersets and normalizes the links in creating the connection group objects such that the subsequent use of a recursive algorithm by the provisioning platform is enabled.