Patent ID: 8089904

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a network analysis machine, a plurality of address forwarding tables that define address sets associated with ports of nodes in a network, selecting a root node from the nodes of the network, creating, by the network analysis machine, a partition associated with each port of the root node that includes each of the other nodes of the network that are simply connected to the port, based on the address forwarding tables, if any nodes remain that have not been included in at least one partition, selecting a node from among the remaining nodes as the root node and repeating the creating of partitions associated with each port of the root node that includes each of the other nodes of the network that are simply connected to the port, until each node of the network has been included in at least one partition, determining, by the network analysis machine, a topology of each partition based at least in part on the address forwarding tables, and merging, by the network analysis machine, the topologies of the partitions to determine a topology of the network.