Patent ID: 8014320

Claim:
A method of discovering a physical topology of a telecommunication network having a plurality of nodes interconnected by physical links with a management node of a network management system (NMS), wherein the nodes include switches, routers, and bridges, and wherein the nodes have interfaces which utilize the spanning tree protocol to set up a spanning tree topology, the method comprising the steps of: configuring the switches, routers, and bridges with an IP address of the management node; discovering the nodes in the network by the network management node, the step of discovering the nodes including: broadcasting a discovery message from the management node to all nodes of the network; receiving by the management node, reply messages from replying nodes; and adding each replying node to the network physical topology; and discovering the spanning tree topology of the physical links by the management node, the step of discovering the spanning tree topology including: retrieving by the management node, information from Address Forwarding Tables maintained by the switches; assigning a ranking value by the management node to each of the switches, wherein a given switch's ranking value depends on how many of the network switches are seen by the given switch; and utilizing the ranking values to discover the physical links.