The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 31, 1992
Filed:
Jun. 23, 1988
Andrew H Arrowood, Raleigh, NC (US);
Kathryn E Clarke, Little Silver, NJ (US);
John E Drake, Jr, Pittsboro, NC (US);
John L Eisenbies, Raleigh, NC (US);
James P Gray, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Karla J Norsworthy, Raleigh, NC (US);
Diane P Pozefsky, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Terence D Smetanka, Raleigh, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
In a communications network, each network node can maintain its own list of network resources in a topology database. When the state of a resource 'owned' by a particular node changes, that node broadcasts a topology database update (TDU) message to adjacent nodes. Each adjacent node updates its own topology database and rebroadcasts the message. To minimize the amount of information that must be included in TDU messages when two nodes are reconnected after an outage, each node assigns flow reduction sequence numbers (FRSNs) to TDU meassages and keeps a record of the FRSN for the last TDU message sent to an adjacent node. The node also records, for each resource in its database, the FRSN of the last TDU message including that resource. When two nodes are reconnected, the sending node includes in the TDU message only those resources having a FRSN greater than the FRSN assigned to the last TDU sent to the adjacent node to which the TDU message is directed.