Patent ID: 8041804

Claim:
A method comprising: capturing a plurality of Internet Protocol (IP) packets prior to the packets entering an ingress point of a network device wherein the plurality of captured IP packets form a network traffic stream having a pattern; saving the captured IP packets, wherein the captured IP packets are saved in an order of the traffic stream; wherein the saved IP packets contain a payload including application level information; injecting the saved IP packets through the ingress point of the network device, in the order of the traffic stream; logging operations performed on the saved IP packets, in order of performance, wherein the logging comprises adding one or more tags to the saved IP packets wherein each tag of the one or more tags indicates an operation performed on the saved IP packets by the network device; inspecting the saved IP packets and corresponding tags to determine the operations performed and the order of performance of the operations as indicated by the one or more tags and an order of the one or more tags; correlating network device configuration information corresponding to a network device configuration for the network device with the operations performed on the saved IP packets, wherein the operations performed each map to one or more corresponding lines in a configuration file; and displaying the mapped operations with the correlated network device configuration information, wherein the mapped operations are shown inline with the corresponding lines in the configuration file.