British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

British Telecommunications Corporation

Michael R Hosking

Simon A Beddus

David Roxburgh

Patrick B Farley

Gary L Bruce

A method of determining the topology of at least part of a network comprising the steps of: monitoring traffic to and/or from a plurality of computers in the network; storing information relating to the monitored traffic for each of the plurality of computers, the information including an identifier of a requested service; selecting a first computer of the plurality of computers; reading the stored information related to the first computer and identifying, using the stored identifier of the requested service, at least one traffic flow to or from the first computer that corresponds to the requested service; using the stored information to identify the destination or origin of the identified traffic flow for the first computer, which traffic flow information includes the identifier of the requested service; using the identified destination or origin to identify one or more computers that are immediately upstream or downstream of the first computer, and determining a topology based on the identified one or more upstream or downstream computers.

Network topology

A client server system uses a client subsystem, a server subsystem and an interconnecting data network. The client subsystem client application initiates a secure connection over the network with the server subsystem which includes a server application cooperating with the client application to complete a secure connection with the client application and which transmits output data over such a connection in response to requests for service by the client application. The server subsystem additionally generates a notification, in response to detecting an event in the absence of a secure connection between the server and the client, and transmits the notification to the notification server which forwards the notification over the interconnecting network to the client application.

Method and apparatus for communicating data between computer devices

A method and system for controlling service requests from a client to a server involves intercepting and controlling the transmission of service requests from the client to the server. The service requests are queued at the client and the transmission of the queued service requests are delayed to smooth the frequency of service requests transmitted to the server.

Growing community of inventors

Ipswich, United Kingdom

Michael R Hosking