Multiplex communications – Pathfinding or routing – Switching a message which includes an address header
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-04
2001-05-08
Patel, Ajit (Department: 2662)
Multiplex communications
Pathfinding or routing
Switching a message which includes an address header
C370S338000, C370S346000, C370S449000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06229807
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The invention relates to a process of monitoring the activity status of terminals in a digital communication system and relates in particular to the control by a primary station of a digital communication system whether the secondary stations in the system are still alive.
BACKGROUND
In any communication environment including a central equipment and a plurality of remote equipments, especially in digital communication systems operating in multipoint, the central equipment has to control frequently the presence of each remote equipment. Indeed, in any hierarchical system, internal resources are allocated for each remote equipment. The management of such resources must be performed as rapidly as possible after use, as soon as the remote equipment disappears. Such resources can be control blocks, traffic queues, timers, semaphore software . . . As the total resources of the central equipment are size limited, the non-release of unused resources can result in refusing to serve new remote equipments.
A classical method to avoid such a drawback consists for the central equipment to poll successively the remote equipments and invite them to transmit an information confirming they are alive. Unfortunately, the polling protocol results in an overhead, that is the portion of bandwidth consumed to implement the protocol, which is all the more important since the time required to detect that a remote equipment has disappeared is short.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the primary object of the invention is to provide a process of monitoring, in a digital communication system comprising a primary station and a plurality of secondary stations, the activity status of each secondary station which enables to discover whether a station has to be disconnected in a minimum of time although the resulting overhead remains limited.
The process of the invention consists for the primary station in determining that each monitored secondary station is still currently associated, determining whether any data from the monitored secondary station have been received by the primary station, and if not, transmitting to the monitored secondary station invitations to send back a message “I am alive”, at last initiating a routine for de-associating the monitored secondary station if the number of the invitations transmitted thereto reaches a predetermined number without the monitored secondary station transmitting such a message.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5805586 (1998-09-01), Perreault et al.
patent: 5903557 (1999-05-01), Johansson et al.
patent: 5939999 (1999-08-01), Ohgaki
patent: 6002680 (1999-12-01), Sierens et al.
patent: 6058106 (2000-05-01), Cudak et al.
Bauchot Frederic
Marmigere Gerard
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