Chih Yung Chao

59648376, Oct 12, 1999

Jun 28, 1995

8/495383

Chih Wei Chao - Santa Clara CA
William Tsun - Cary NC

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G06F 1100

709224

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.