Cisco Technology, Inc.

Grant Allen Marvin

Justin Joel Delegard

Timothy John Passaro

James Michael Roewe

Various implementations disclosed herein include systems, methods and apparatuses that determine connections between non-external facing ports. In some implementations, a method includes identifying one or more port pair connections between non-external network facing ports associated with respective pairs of compliant devices based on associated uplink metadata, wherein the respective pairs of compliant devices are included in a plurality of compliant devices within a network; determining the respective status of each compliant device associated with a particular one of the one or more port pair connections; and adding link data for a particular one of the one or more port pair connections to topology-link map data based at least on the determined respective status of each compliant device associated with the particular one of the one or more port pair connections, wherein the topology-link map data archives accessible information about the topology of the network based at least on the uplink metadata.

Determining connections of non-external network facing ports

Previously available network management systems fail to adequately enable discovery of a network topology that includes both compliant and non-compliant networking devices. By contrast, and to that end, various implementations disclosed herein include systems, methods and apparatuses that determine whether or not a loop exists within uplink metadata associated with first and second compliant devices, wherein the loop in the uplink metadata is characterized by pointers provided to indicate that the first and second compliant devices operate to send externally addressed traffic to one another contrary to the operation of the first and second compliant devices within a network; and resolve the loop by adding a non-compliant device to topology-link map data associated with the first and second compliant devices in response to determining the existence of the loop, wherein the topology-link map data archives accessible information about the topology of the network based at least on the uplink metadata.

Network topology discovery by resolving loops

Various implementations disclosed herein include systems, methods and apparatuses that determine connections between disconnected partial trees. For example, in some implementations, a method includes obtaining a respective device identifier of a first network device included in a first one of a plurality of partial trees included in a network, wherein each partial tree includes at least one network device, and connectivity from the at least one network device to other partial trees is undefined based on associated uplink metadata; querying a plurality of compliant devices within the plurality of partial trees in order to trace a path traversal of the respective device identifier within the network; and selecting one of the plurality of compliant devices as connecting the first network device to a second one of the plurality of partial trees based at least on query responses provided by the plurality of compliant devices.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Grant Allen Marvin