Patent ID: 6859452

Claim:
A method for identifying a connection between a destination local area network (LAN) and a local LAN where said LANs are coupled by an ATM-based wide area network (WAN), wherein each of said LANs includes a router, and wherein said WAN includes at least two ATM switches, the method comprising the steps of: identifying one or more ATM interfaces on each router; retrieving and storing an IP address, a subnet mask, a city, a state, and a virtual circuit identifier from each ATM interface, thereby identifying a list of entries; using the IP address in conjunction with the subnet mask stored for each ATM interface in the list to derive a destination IP address, thereby identifying a pair of network IP addresses; identifying a virtual circuit identifier value associated with each of the pair of network IP addresses; retrieving and preparing WAN configuration data so as to permit a LAN-to-WAN correlation; associating the city, state, and pair of virtual circuit identifier values of the ATM interfaces on the LANs with the city, state and pair of virtual circuit identifier values on the WAN; and retrieving and storing the associated configuration information and components of the WAN along with the entries of the list.