The algorithms for automatic topology discovery in heterogeneous IP networks

We provides series of algorithms for automatic topology discovery in heterogeneous IP networks, which can not only discover logical links as current network management platforms does but also find physical ones. We model the IP network as Administrated Domain (AD), which can be divided into Switched Domain (SD) and backbone. The logical topology of AD that consists of all subnets, routers and the connections among them, is obtained by analyzing route table and ARP table. Discovering the physical topology, which corresponds to many logical ones, depends on the spanning tree protocol and the ICMP. We describe the algorithms in the form of lemmas and pseudocodes, and also discuss some implementation in detail. The experimental results validate our approaches, demonstrating that the algorithms are more efficient and faster to discover the detail topology of heterogeneous IP network, and valuable to network management systems.