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:
Jul. 30, 1996
Filed:
Apr. 23, 1991
Robert E Armstrong, Hunt Valley, MD (US);
Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, TX (US);
Abstract
A distributed network monitor system distributes the network monitoring function among each of the nodes of a multiple network system, such that monitor software resident in each node is responsible for providing status information about that node and its communications links. At predetermined monitoring intervals, a circulating status table (CST) (FIG. 4) is circulated to all of the on-line nodes, with each node updating the CST with its link and status information. The monitor software (FIG. 1) includes a servicer task (22), a node monitor task (24), and a packet manager task (26), with intertask data transfers being implemented through a monitor region (28) in memory. In addition to link and node status information, the CST includes information about links that are in an intermittent condition (i.e., links with significantly degraded statistical performance). Intermittent link conditions are determined by a voting procedure in which each node votes on the condition of its links with other nodes, with the results of the votes being distributed in the CST and used by each node to determine those nodes with links in an intermittent condition. For those links without sufficient message traffic to make a clear determination of condition, volunteer nodes send additional link test messages until sufficient statistical information is available.