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:
Sep. 02, 2003
Filed:
Feb. 01, 2000
Thomas L. Rodeheffer, Mountain View, CA (US);
Darrell Anderson, Durham, NC (US);
Chandramohan A. Thekkath, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Mark D. Lillibridge, Mountain View, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
A bridged network and a method for performing bridged network topology acquisition. The bridged network includes network segments and smart bridges having one or more ports. The network segments are interconnected by the smart bridges via the ports. Each of the smart bridges being configured to perform steps to accomplish the network topology acquisition. The method also performs steps to accomplish the network topology acquisition. The steps include an inventory construction that compiles a list of the ports that are connected to each of the network segments. Among the ports that are connected to any of the network segments the inventory construction respecting each port operates cooperatively so as to cause the list respecting each of the ports to converge rapidly to the state in which all the lists are similar and yielding a uniform segment inventory. The bridged network topology acquisition in each of the smart bridges operates cooperatively with the bridged network topology acquisition in other smart bridges in order to create a total network report from most recent segment inventories. The bridged network topology acquisition includes propagation, collection, and distribution. The bridges network topology acquisition affords better management of network topology changes.