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:
Jan. 21, 1997
Filed:
Jun. 23, 1994
Steven D Romohr, Austin, TX (US);
Dell USA, LP, Austin, TX (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for automatically detecting the prevalence of local area network operating system services and network frame type protocols that are being used on a network to which a computer system is being attached. When a computer system is newly attached to a network, the present invention transmits specific operating system broadcast inquiries using various frame type protocols across the network. The present invention then counts the network operating system specific responses for each of these supported frame types. These response counts indicate the prevalence of each network operating system and the prevalence of the network frame type protocol supported by each network operating system. The computer system then configures itself according to the most prevalent network operating system and frame type being used in the network, and thus a system administrator is not required to manually configure each computer being added to a network.