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:
Oct. 12, 1999
Filed:
Jun. 28, 1995
Chih Wei Chao, Santa Clara, CA (US);
William Tsun, Cary, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method of monitoring the topology of a network uses dynamic switching between a polling mode and a event-monitoring mode. The network is of the type having point-to-point connections between a number of nodes. In the polling mode, a manager coupled to one of the nodes sends a request to an agent in each of the nodes for information about operativeness of the node, its agent, and its connections to other nodes. All of this information is collected to generate a topology map, which may be visually displayed. In the event-monitoring mode, the manager waits for event-messages from the agents in the nodes, to update the topology map. The manager switches from event monitoring mode (which is more efficient) to polling (which is usually more accurate) in response to a number of factors, including the reachablity of the nodes, the manageability of the nodes, and the consistency of information received from various nodes. Reachability is an indication of whether an enabled connection exists from manager to node. Manageability means whether or not the node responds to requests from the manager.