Nortel Networks Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation

Luc A Pariseau

Henry S Yang

William R Hawe

Barry A Spinney

Da-Hai Ding

Brenda A Thompson

Swati Dhuleshia

Manjiri S Gadagkar

A decentralized management model enables a plurality of interconnected modules to be managed and controlled as an integrated unit without requiring any one of the interconnected modules to operate as a fully centralized manager. One of the interconnected modules is configured to operate as a base module, which coordinates certain network management operations among the interconnected modules. Each of the interconnected modules is capable of sending and receiving management and control information. Each of the interconnected modules maintains a segmented management database containing network management parameters that are specific to the particular module, and also maintains a shadowed management database containing network management parameters that are common to all of the interconnected modules in the stack. Management and control operations that do not require synchronization or mutual exclusion among the various interconnected modules are typically handled by the module that receives a management/control request. Management and control operations that require synchronization or mutual exclusion among the various interconnected modules are handled by the base module.

Decentralized management architecture for a modular communication system

A networking device and method for providing a predictable membership scheme for policy-based virtual local area networks (VLANs). In the event that identical behavior toward incoming expected and unexpected untagged frames is desired, a first membership scheme imposes a first set of rules while a second membership scheme, having a second set of rules, is used if expected and unexpected untagged frames are treated differently.

Networking device and method for providing a predictable membership scheme for policy-based VLANs

A technique for establishing and maintaining full duplex communication between two stations connected to a token ring network, without physically reconfiguring the station connections or otherwise disturbing the network. Each station continually performs a two node test to ascertain whether there are only two active stations on the network, and updates a two node flag that indicates whether or only two active stations are present. The two node test uses both upstream neighbor and downstream neighbor addresses to update the two node flag, and requires validation of either one of these addresses if the other one of them appears to have changed since the previous observation. A concurrently running full duplex control process uses the two node flag and other conditions to decide whether to initiate or continue transition to full duplex mode. The control process uses an exchange of full duplex request and acknowledgment frames and completes the transition to full duplex mode when each station has transmitted and received a Restricted Token.

Negotiation protocol for establishment of full duplex communication on a

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Arlington, MA, United States of America

Luc A Pariseau