US 5,347,272 AGranted

System for determining communication routes in a network

AssigneeFuji Xerox Co., Ltd.

InventorHiromi Ota

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A network system capable of speedily selecting an intermediate system which can provide a shortest route of data communication among various intermediate systems even if routing information is not stored on the end system side, and in which the wasteful routing information is not held on the end system side, thereby minimizing an amount of routing information stored. In the network system, each packet for broadcast communication sent from each intermediate system is imparted to an intermediate system-address extracting unit 6 via a reception unit 2 and a packet processing unit 4 in the end system. The management-address extracting unit 6 extracts addresses of the intermediate systems from the packets, and stores these addresses in the management-address storage unit 8. When the packet is transmitted from this end system, the packet processing unit 4 obtains addresses in the management-address storage unit 8 via a route request unit 9, and sends a request of routing information to the intermediate systems having these addresses via a transmission unit 10. When the respective routing information is sent from the intermediate systems to the end system in response to that request, a route selecting unit 5 determines a shortest route to the destination on the basis of each routing information. The packet processing unit 4 request the intermediate system providing the shortest route to relay the packet.

Claims9

Dependent claims

A network system comprising:

a network, a plurality of end systems connected to said network, said end systems acting only as sources and destinations of data to be transmitted and received;
and a plurality of intermediate systems for relaying said data to be transmitted and received to and from said plurality of end systems;
wherein at least one of said plurality of intermediate systems includes:
broadcast communication means for transmitting broadcast communication data, in which an address of said at least one of said plurality of intermediate systems is set as a sender, to said plurality of end systems connected to said network to which said at least one of said plurality of intermediate systems is connected as well as to at least one other of said plurality of said intermediate systems;
preparing means for preparing routing information on the basis of the broadcast communication data transmitted by said at least one other of said plurality of intermediate systems;
first routing information storage means for storing the routing information prepared by said preparing means;
and
returning means for returning the routing information to at least one of said plurality of end systems upon request of said at least one of said plurality of end systems, and
wherein said at least one said plurality of said end systems includes:
extracting means which, upon receiving respective broadcast communication data transmitted from said at least one of said plurality of intermediate systems, is adapted to extract an address of said at least one of said plurality of intermediate systems respectively contained in the broadcast communication data;
storage means for storing the address extracted by said extracting means;
request means for requesting routing information from said at least one of plurality of intermediate systems on the basis of the address of said at least one of said plurality of intermediate systems in said storage means when the data is transmitted to said network;
and
selecting means for selecting a selected one of said plurality of intermediate systems from which the relaying of data is requested, on the basis of the respective routing information from said plurality of intermediate systems obtained as a result of the request by said request means.

11 more elements

An end system which is connected to a network system including a network and a plurality of intermediate systems each of said plurality of intermediate systems adapted to relay transmission and reception of data transmitted through the network and to transmit broadcast communication data which are broadcast to a plurality of addresses and in which an own address is set as a sender, so as to effect said transmission and reception of data, said end system comprising:

extracting means which, upon receiving respective broadcast communication data transmitted from said plurality of intermediate systems, is adapted to extract addresses of said plurality of intermediate systems respectively contained in the broadcast communication data;
storage means for storing the addresses extracted by said extracting means;
request means for requesting routing information from said plurality of intermediate systems on the basis of the addresses stored in said storage means when the data is transmitted to said network;
and
selecting means for selecting a selected one of said plurality of intermediate systems from which the relaying of data is requested, on the basis of the respective routing information from said plurality of intermediate systems obtained as a result of the request by said request means.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 07/943,567Filed 11 Sep 1992
Priority: JP 3-23506013 Sep 1991
Granted: 13 Sep 1994
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification4 codes

H04L 12/185
For broadcast or conference , e.g. multicast: with management of multicast group membership
H04L 45/02
Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks: topology update or discovery
H04L 45/16
Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks: multipoint routing
H04L
Digital communication

Family

No related US applications are recorded in the indexed filing history.

Timeline

Citations

Open elsewhere

Building an agent or pulling many patents? Use the API or MCP server instead of scraping pages. Get an API key