Patent 8127042 was granted and assigned to Ciena (company) on February, 2012 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method of identifying a connectivity characteristic structure in a network provided between a plurality of nodes in a network comprises the steps of acquiring node information detailing for each port of each node a connection characteristic of that port; collating for at least a plurality of nodes forming a plurality of trails in the network each node's respective acquired node information to form a set of connection characteristics; and analyzing the set of connection characteristics to determine a set of at least one rule describing a connectivity characteristic structure of the plurality of nodes.