International Business Machines Corporation

Christopher C Gaskins

Gregory Brian Pruett

Simon C Chu

James Franklin Macon, Jr

Michael R Primm

David Joseph Doria

Gregg Matthew Margosian

Jianping Yang

Jeffrey Lee Barrett

A method for a guaranteeing a network manager discovers SNMP agents on a communications network. Each SNMP agent transmits a trap to the network manager. The trap contains the network manager's IP address and the SNMP agent's identifying information, including its IP address. When the trap is received at the network manager, it is parsed for the agent identifying information, which is compared against a list of previously identified/discovered agents. If the agent identifying information is not found, i.e., if the agent is a newly discovered agent, the network manager adds the agent to the list of discovered agents. The agent is then registered/stored in the discovered agents file. When the trap does not include sufficient identifying information, the network manager sends a query to the agent to extract additional identifying information. The system manager is thus able to discover all connected agents without broadcasting a query message.

Notification method that guarantees a system manager discovers an SNMP agent

Growing community of inventors

Cary, NC, United States of America

Christopher C Gaskins