Patent ID: 7555562

Claim:
A method of mirroring a traffic flow from a source network device to a target network device for allowing analysis of the traffic flow using the target network device, the method comprising the steps of: receiving one or more ingress frames of the traffic flow at the source network device; generating at least one duplicate frame for each of the one or more ingress frames at the source network device in response to determining that the one or more ingress frames satisfy prescribed mirror classification criteria corresponding to information intended to influence said analysis of the traffic flow, wherein each of the one or more ingress frames at least comprises an associated address corresponding to an original designation network device; appending a virtual local area network (VLAN) tag to the at least one duplicate frame, wherein the VLAN designated the target network device which is different than the original designation network device; transmitting the one or more ingress frames from the source network device based on the associated address; transmitting the at least one duplicate frame with the VLAN tag from the source network device towards the target network device based on the VLAN tag; receiving the at least one duplicate frame with the VLAN tag at the target network device; removing the VLAN tag from the at least one duplicate frame at the target network device after receiving the at least one duplicate frame at the target network device such that the target network device generates a substantially identical copy of at least one of the one or more ingress frames of the traffic flow received at the source network device; and performing analysis of the at least one duplicate frame received at the target network device using the target network device for accessing the at least one duplicate frame.