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. 04, 2008
Filed:
Jan. 22, 2002
Simon Peter Valentine, Hemel Hempstead, GB;
Christopher Robert Linzell, St. Albans, GB;
Peter Wai Lam, Maidenhead, GB;
Andrew Peter White, St. Albans, GB;
Simon Peter Valentine, Hemel Hempstead, GB;
Christopher Robert Linzell, St. Albans, GB;
Peter Wai Lam, Maidenhead, GB;
Andrew Peter White, St. Albans, GB;
3Com Corporation, Marlborough, MA (US);
Abstract
A network management apparatus and method for determining the topology of a networkis described. The present invention uses data relating to discovered devices on the networktypically network management address table data, to build a network tree. Due to the presence of unsupported or unmanaged connecting network devices, some branches of the resulting tree may not be resolved. In order to address this, for each unresolved branch of the network tree, the present invention attempts to determine the type of each of the discovered network devices on the branch, and if the type of every discovered network device on the branch is determined to be an endstation type, the present invention determines that an undiscovered connecting device is present on the branch.