Discovery and rediscovery protocol method and system

Abstract

A management station discovers agent devices connected to a network by broadcasting discovery messages having a session number and waiting for discovery acknowledge unicast messages from at least some of the discovery aware agent devices connected to the network. The management station receives the discovery acknowledge unicast messages from the agent devices and each message comprises the session number and an address uniquely identifying the agent device sending the discovery acknowledge unicast message. The management station then sends a unicast registration message having a sequence number based on the session number of the discovery message. At that point, the agent device will be registered permitting further communication to the registered discovery aware agent device. The management station will send, periodically, rediscovery messages having the same session number as the discovery message. The discovery aware agent devices connected to the network which have not previously responded to a discovery or rediscovery message having the same session number or have not received a registration message with a sequence number related to the session number will respond to subsequent rediscovery messages. The agent devices will not respond to subsequent rediscovery messages if the agent device has previously received a unicast registration message with a sequence number related to the session number of the multicast discovery message or the subsequent multicast rediscovery message.