Consumers and organizations may spend a considerable amount of resources configuring and troubleshooting local area networks (“LANs”). In many cases, consumers and organizations may wish to discover details about the topology of their LANs in order to more efficiently configure, troubleshoot, and/or maintain their LANs. While the transparent functionality afforded by some networking protocols may simplify the operation of a LAN, it may also make gathering information about the infrastructure on which those protocols operate more difficult. More specifically, transparent bridging performed by layer-2 switches may enable a LAN to function without an understanding of the layer-2 topology of the LAN. Accordingly, many LANs may exist without configuration information that specifies their topology.
Traditional technologies for discovering the layer-2 topology of LANs may leverage management capabilities of some layer-2 switches. For examples, these technologies may use the Simple Network Management Protocol (“SNMP”) to communicate with layer-2 switches and gather information useful for constructing a topology of a LAN. Unfortunately, these technologies may have several drawbacks. For example, these technologies may require an administrator to have a certain level of knowledge about the topology of a LAN. Furthermore, these technologies may require administrative privileges to access relevant network management data. However, due to organizational division of responsibilities, an administrator requiring network topological information may not have the necessary privileges. Additionally, these technologies may not work at all with unmanaged layer-2 switches.
An alternative approach may attempt to infer information about the layer-2 topology of a LAN by spoofing Media Access Control (“MAC”) addresses when transmitting frames across the network. Unfortunately, this approach may fail in network environments that implement MAC filtering to prevent spoofing. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies a need for additional and improved systems and methods for mapping network topologies.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds