Patent ID: 7349985

Claim:
A method for calculating a multi-point VLAN latency measure, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of links for a VLAN having a total number of VLAN paths, each of the links having a first side and a second side and including a latency value, a count of access switches on the first side of the link and a count of access switches on the second side of the link; initializing a latency counter to zero; for each of the links in the VLAN: multiplying the count of access switches on the first side of the link by the count of access switches on the second side of the link to derive a count of paths that include the link; multiplying the count of paths that include the link by the latency value to derive a total latency for the link; and incrementing the latency counter by the total latency value for the link; and dividing the latency counter by the total number of VLAN paths to derive the multi-point VLAN latency measure for the VLAN.