Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-12-04
2001-10-02
Lim, Krisna (Department: 2153)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer network managing
C709S224000, C370S254000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06298378
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer network architectures, and, more specifically, to software for managing computer and communications networks. More particularly, the present invention provides software, systems, and apparatus for managing software entities and hardware over a computer network. The present invention has applications in the areas of computer science, computer network management, and computer software.
2. The Related Art
The demands on computer network managers have grown exponentially as the size and extensiveness of computer networks has grown over the past decade. Starting from the relatively simple task of maintaining communication among a relatively small number of mainframe computers, network managers must now coordinate operations among thousands of computers, printers, servers, and other networked devices. With the advent of the Java® and Jini™ programming languages, even household devices will soon become linked over computer networks running on household “intranets” that in turn are linked to the worldwide Internet. Thus, there appears to be no end in sight to the increasing burden on network managers.
To control and coordinate the software associated with the myriad of networked computers and other devices, network managers employ software designed to track, establish communications with, and control various software entities or processes that exist independently or represent the networked devices. Entities that represent networked devices are also referred to herein as “agents”. The software used by the network manager interacts with various “platform-level” software services to enable the network manager to locate and interact with the various entities running on the network. Typically all communications between the network manager and the entities running on the network, as well as communications between entities, are managed by a central service.
The entities on the network can communicate among each other and the network manager by sending and receiving messages. Messages can be requests, responses, or events. Events may be alarm states (e.g., a warning of a communications failure or an error state) or some other public notification of the change of state in the entity. Various entities on the network “subscribe” to events generated by other entities so that co-operative relationships among entities can be maintained. Given the number and variety of events that can be generated, the volume of events being processed by the network management software can be great for large computer networks even when few or no error messages are being generated. This volume can slow system performance dramatically. Also, many systems rely on the same central software service to process both communications connection and events. This reliance on a single service to process such high volumes of data creates a risk of catastrophic network failure if the central software service fails. Such risks and decreased performance are not acceptable for large-scale networks that must be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Also, the event handing system should be scalable to allow efficient upgrades to computer network capacity.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide an event-handling system for a computer network management architecture that can process large numbers of events and continue to operate even if a central piece of the network management software fails. It would also be beneficial to have event-handling software that can be scaled efficiently as new devices and entities are added to the computer network. The present invention meets these and other needs.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention meets the above-described needs by providing, in one aspect, an event-handling system for computer and communications network management architectures that has high processing capacity and is robust. The design of the event handling software, system, and methods provided by the present invention is readily scaled to handle efficiently the demands of ever-growing computer and communications networks and can be run in processes separate form other network management functions. Such a capability reduces the risk of a catastrophic network management failure.
In one aspect, the present invention provides a method for reporting events raised by entities running on a computer network. According to one embodiment of this aspect of the invention, an event distribution service coupled with an event source and an event listener is provided on the computer network. An event is generated from the event source and received by the event distribution system. The event distribution system processes the event and forwards the event, or a notification of the event, to the listener.
In a more specific embodiment, the method of the invention includes the step of providing an event sink and an event adapter. Sill more specifically, the invention includes the step of configuring the event sink and event adapter using an event distribution registry. In one embodiment, the event adapter receives the event and forwards the event to the event sink. The event sink compares the event with a table of filters. In another embodiment, the event adapter both receives and filters the event.
In another aspect, the present invention provides a system for distributing events generated by an event source on a computer network to event listeners on the computer network. The system provides, in one embodiment, an event distribution registry. The event distribution registry is configured to provide event filters and event listener addresses corresponding to the event listeners. The event distribution registry is coupled with an event adapter that is configured to receive events generated by event source. The event adapter is coupled with an event sink that is configured to forward events to the event listeners.
In a more specific embodiment of the system just described, the event distribution registry is configured to assign event sinks to the event adapters and the event listeners to the event sinks. In another more specific embodiment, of the invention, the event sinks are configured to filter the events. In alternative embodiment, the event adapters are configured to filter the events.
In other aspects, the present invention includes computer-readable media and computer data signals on a carrier wave that include instructions for providing an event distribution service on a computer network. The event distribution is configured to be coupled with an event source and an event listener, and receive and process an event generated by the event source. The event distribution service of the invention forwards the event to the event listener.
These and other aspects and advantages will become apparent when the Description below is read in conjunction with the accompanying Drawings.
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Angal Rajeev
Bapat Subodh
Bhat Shivaram
Sondur Ragavendra
Beyer Weaver & Thomas LLP
Lim Krisna
Sun Microsystems Inc.
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