Method for inferring physical network topology from end-to-end measurement

A computer implemented method for determining a layer-3 topology of a network comprising the steps of:

• sending from a single source node a sequence of probing packets to two other receiver nodes wherein each node represents a physical layer-3 device;
• determining, based on time-to-live, queuing delay and delay variations between probing packet measurements made at the receiver nodes, two layer-3 routing paths between the source node and the receiver nodes and a node where they diverge;
• repeating the above sending and determining steps after changing source-destination pairs such that a number of layer-3 single source routing sub-trees between a source and a number of destination nodes is determined;
• merging all the sub-trees into a single routing tree;
• and
• outputting an indication of a network topology which is representative of the network.