Patent ID: 8316118

Claim:
In a network supporting transactions between clients and servers, wherein clients have network nodes from which transactions are requested and servers have network nodes from which to issue responses responsive to client requests, wherein packets between a first client and a first server travel over a first network path that may include one or more additional nodes between a first client network node and a first server network node, a method of probing for node devices on a network path comprising: receiving, at a first probe node in the network path, a first packet from a target client wherein the first packet is a packet directed at a target server; modifying the first packet to signal presence of the first probe node in the network path, thus forming a modified first packet having therein a presence signal; forwarding the modified first packet onto the network path, directed toward the target server; monitoring, at the first probe node, a plurality of packets directed at the target client and associated with the target server to detect whether any packets of the plurality of packets contain return signals, wherein a return signal is a signal from a first device at a second probe node that detects the presence signal in the modified first packet and wherein a first return signal is an indication that the first device at the second probe node detected the presence signal as being a probing signal; acting on a first successful probe if a responsive return signal is received corresponding to a presence signal sent from the first probe node; updating a mapping table with results of the first successful probe; and following a current connection, using a mapping from the mapping table in a later connection.