A method for discovering the topology of communications between applications of a computer network having several items of equipment, the method including the following steps: a) connecting to each of the items of equipment of the network, b) for each item of equipment, acquiring raw data relating to applications hosted within the item of equipment, c) for each item of equipment, acquiring connection data for each live connection established by an application, d) from the raw data and the connection data thus obtained, communication links are determined respectively between pairs of applications of the network, and e) a level-7 topology of the network is generated from the communication links.