International Business Machines Corporation

Rodney A Bell

Edward Glen Britton

John G Stevenson

Ronald D Martin

Raymond C Williams

Barbara Ann Smith

Curtis J Frantz

William G Kreps, Iii

John D Hajian

Marshall E Sprague

James B Staton, Iii

William V Evans, Jr

Petre N Turcu

Christopher P Ballard

A process and apparatus for detecting the occurrence of an event threshold and performing some type of action in response to the detection. The disclosed use of the invention is for managing communication connections in a network. An event counter, a sliding event threshold counter and a sliding interval counter are initialized to prescribed initial states at the start of counter management. At the expiration of an interval specified by the contents of the sliding interval counter, the sliding interval counter is incremented by an offset time value, and the sliding event threshold counter is updated by the sum of an offset event value and the event counter. The event counter is incremented on each occurrence of an event to be counted. Each time the event counter exceeds a threshold established by the sliding threshold event counter, the sliding threshold event counter is incremented by the contents of the offset event value, and the sliding interval counter is updated to the sum of the offset time value and the present time. Thus, all values of interest are maintained by a combination of keeping an absolute count of the events, and by 'sliding' the contents of two counters, one of which is used to measure successive time intervals and the other to set a new threshold for each successive interval based on the offset threshold and the absolute event count at the beginning of the interval.

Process and apparatus for managing network event counters

Data communications neworks may be composed of many different physical devices linked together in various layers and using various protocols for communication. The multiple physical elements that make up such communication networks or links are often supplied by diverse vendors. As a result, isolation and diagnosis of communication failures becomes an extremely difficult and cumbersome process. The present system and method simplify the process greatly by premitting a system control operator or control application program to issue generic, non-device-specific problem isolation, control or diagnostic commands to the communication neetwork by identifying the link and target node for which problem isolation and diagnosis is required. The non-device-specific commands are received first at an intermediate translation facility which retrieves communication link physical configuration data and identifies the physical components and characteristics thereof that make up that communication link to the identified target node. The translation facility then issues one or more device-specific problem determination commands on the communication link directed toward said node. It receives one or more device-specific responses from one or more physcial devices in the communication link and, responsive thereto, either issues further device-specific commands on the communication link to complete the diagnosis or issues generic, non-device-specific problem identification results as responses to the requesting control nodes' initial request.

Method and apparatus for diagnosing problems in data communication

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Littleton, NC, United States of America

Rodney A Bell