Systems and methods for determining characteristics of a network and assessing confidence

A method for selecting a service of a network device from the results of two or more service identification techniques used in a passive network detection system, comprising:

• employing the two or more service identification techniques to create two or more service results;
• assigning each of the two or more service results a confidence value;
• comparing confidence values of the two or more service results;
• and
• selecting a result with a highest confidence value as the service of the network device,
• wherein the confidence values are two or more predetermined numeric weights based respectively on the two or more service identification techniques used to produce the two or more service results, further
• if the selected result is equivalent to a previous selected result for the network device, adding a confirming increment value to a confidence value of the previous selected result to produce a confidence value of the result, wherein the confirming increment value is calculated as one half an absolute value of a difference between the confidence value of the previous selected result and the confidence value of the result;
• if the result is not equivalent to the previous selected result for the network device, calculating a detracting increment value as one half of the confirming increment value and subtracting the detracting increment value from the confidence value of the previous selected result to produce the confidence value of the result.

A method for determining a confidence value of a result for one of an operating system and a service by considering previous results, comprising:

• identifying a result from a first one or more packets by an identifying technique;
• if the result is equivalent to a previous result for a previous packet, adding a confirming increment value to a confidence value of the previous result to produce a confidence value of the result, wherein the confirming increment value is calculated as one half an absolute value of a difference between the confidence value of the previous result and the confidence value of the result;
• if the result is not equivalent to a previous result, calculating a detracting increment value as one half of the confirming increment value and subtracting the detracting increment value from the confidence value of the previous result to produce the confidence value of the result;
• identifying a subsequent result from a second one or more packets by a second identifying technique;
• if the subsequent result is equivalent to the result, calculating the confirming increment value as one half an absolute value of a difference between the confidence value of the previous result and the confidence value of the result and adding the confirming increment value to the confidence value of the result to produce a confidence value of the subsequent result;
• if the subsequent result is not equivalent to the result and the result is not equivalent to a previous result, doubling the detracting increment value and subtracting the detracting increment value from the confidence value of the result to produce the confidence value of the subsequent result;
• and
• if the subsequent result is not equivalent to the result and the result is equivalent to a previous result, calculating the detracting increment value as one half of the confirming increment value and subtracting the detracting increment value from the confidence value of the result to produce the confidence value of the subsequent result,
• wherein the confidence value is a numeric weight based on the identifying technique,
• wherein the first one or more packets, the second one or more packets, and the previous packet are from a same network device,
• wherein the identifying technique is used to identify an operating system or service of the network device.