Patent ID: 8578034

Claim:
A method implemented by a computing device, the method comprising: extracting, by the computing device and from multiple configuration files of devices associated with a network, Internet protocol (IP) address information to form an IP address database; analyzing, by the computing device, the IP address database to determine calculated network connection information for the devices associated with the network, where the calculated network connection information is determined without network connectivity between the computing device and the devices associated with the network; generating, by the computing device, a calculated connectivity database that includes the calculated network connection information; conducting, by the computing device, live network discovery, on the network and based on the IP address database, to identify discovered connectivity information; generating, by the computing device, one or more discovered connectivity databases that include the discovered connectivity information; merging, by the computing device, the calculated connectivity database and the one or more discovered connectivity databases to form a master connectivity database that includes network connection information for the devices associated with the network, where the merging includes assigning confidence scores to data that is stored in the calculated connectivity database and the one or more discovered connectivity databases; and generating, by the computing device, an output file based on the master connectivity database.