Patent ID: 7548540

Claim:
A method of determining a layer-2 topology of an IT infrastructure comprising layer-2 interconnect devices having ports, the method comprising: obtaining a list of layer-2 interconnect devices and end devices available in the IT infrastructure, determining uplink and non-uplink ports of the layer-2 interconnect devices, wherein the uplink and non-uplink ports are determined by information stored in forward tables of the layer-2 interconnect devices, wherein the uplink ports of the layer-2 interconnect devices are the ports via which a root device is reachable and the non-uplink ports are all other ports, assigning all the, or a subset of the, layer-2 interconnect devices to one initial group, and iteratively refining the initial group by selecting a layer-2 interconnect device of the initial group and assigning all layer-2 interconnect devices reachable via its non-uplink ports to new subgroups.