Paradyne Corporation

Miguel Abdo

William H Venz

Greg Munroe

Systems and methods for testing network performance and communicating network device information are disclosed. The preferred embodiments of the present invention enhance the standard ICMP echo or ping protocol, while still maintaining backward compatibility. Furthermore, the network performance testing can be based on different qualities of service or types of service. This allows the network testing to be useful in real-time applications such as voice and/or video.

Determination of network performance characteristics

The present invention provides a system and method for automatic discovery of network addresses. Briefly described, in architecture, one embodiment of the apparatus, among others, comprises: an announcer logic; a listener logic; and a forwarder logic. The announcer logic is configured to transmit a node address and a forward counter associated with each known node in a list, if the forward counter is greater than zero, to all nodes in the list having a static type. The listener logic is configured to receive an announcement packet and to add to the list of known nodes at least one new node. The node address and the forward counter of the new node correspond to the announcement packet, and the new node has a discovered type. The forwarder logic is configured to transmit the node address and the forward counter associated with the new node, if the forward counter is greater than zero, to all known nodes in the list.

Automatic discovery of network node addresses

Systems and methods for automatically discovering the configuration of network and/or communication facilities are provided. The determination generally involves receiving and/or sending at least one test message or packet with special characteristics that normally would be filtered by filtering/forwarding entities in connectionless routed cores, but normally would be forwarded by connectionless communication facilities. If the communication facilities do not contain the filtering/forwarding entity, the at least one test packet will be forwarded or passed through the communication facilities. If the at least one test packet is filtered or not passed, then at least two scenarios are possible. First, the at least one test packet may be filtered and may be silently discarded in which case a determination that the network did not pass the at least one test packet may be made based upon a timeout of a counter. Second, the at least one test packet may be filtered and may cause the generation of error or control messages indicating that the at least one test packet is not a proper packet for the network and/or communication facilities.

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Gulfport, FL, United States of America

Miguel Abdo