Jamie Marie Nelson

US Patent:

58357203, Nov 10, 1998

Filed:

May 17, 1996

Appl. No.:

8/649187

Inventors:

Jamie Nelson - Danville CA
Leonard Janze - Walnut Creek CA
Kalpana Ravichandran - Santa Clara CA
Govindarajan Rangarajan - Sunnyvale CA

Assignee:

Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mountain View CA

International Classification:

G06F 1700

US Classification:

39520054

Abstract:

Disclosed herein are methods and apparatus for discovering devices on a network. Active devices can be discovered in ARP tables from routers on the network. Pings can then be sent to the active devices for verification, or pings can be sent to devices at other addresses on the network. Devices can also be discovered by sending a batch of pings to addresses on the network and monitoring responses from those addresses over an interval. After the interval elapses, another batch of pings can be sent. The devices can be discovered by a host on the network or by a network manager. The network manager can add the discovered devices to a network topology database.