Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing – Computer network monitoring
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-08
2002-04-30
Tieu, Binh (Department: 2143)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer network managing
Computer network monitoring
C709S227000, C709S231000, C370S245000, C370S395300, C370S471000, C340S502000, C340S686100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06381643
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The following invention relates generally to cabling of wires, and more specifically to discovering and correcting mis-cabling of wires between switches in large scale super computers.
2. Trademarks
S/390, RS/6000, POWERparallel, Scalable POWERparallel Systems and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., U.S.A. and Lotus is a registered trademark of its subsidiary Lotus Development Corporation, an independent subsidiary of International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y. Other names may be registered trademarks or product names of International Business Machines Corporation or other companies.
3. Related Art
In large scale computers or supercomputers, in addition to large scale networks, there are many connections between the switches. Large scale computers and large scale networks alike have many switch boards. The switch boards, in turn, include multiple switching elements (also called switches, or switch chips). There can be thousands of cable connections between these switch elements.
For a large scale computer, the cables run underneath a raised floor, or false floor. The cables can run 12 inches high, for example. Each cable has a set width. In a typical large scale computer, the widths can be up to one half inch for each cable, or even larger. The cables have end connections at the switch elements.
One or more sets of switch boards are connected to processing computers, which are also called service nodes. These processing computers transmit data to and receive data from the switch fabric, by having connections to the switch elements of these one or more sets of switch boards.
During initialization of the network, one or more processing computers transmit data streams to the switch fabric, to configure and setup communications between the processing computers and the switch elements. The trouble is that no satisfactory method exists for detecting when the cables running between the switch elements have been miswired during this initialization step, or at any other time. Miswires present a problem because processing computers generate routes that get data streams from a particular source to a particular destination based on the assumption that the cabling is correct. The “correct” cabling is designed to evenly distribute bandwidth between the processing computers. Due to the large number of wires and switch elements, this presents a problem in logistics and cost. What is needed is a cost effective, efficient, and automated method for discovering the miswiring of cables in large networks.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to a method, and a system for implementing the method, for determining if a wire has been miswired in a network comprising service nodes and switch elements. The method includes the steps of: (1) transmitting a transmission stream in an outbound route, (where the transmission stream includes one or more service node fields for one or more service nodes, one or more switch element fields for one or more switch elements connected to the one or more service nodes, and a port field for each the switch element); (2) if the transmission stream is received on a port at a the switch element different than a the port field for the switch element indicated by the transmission stream, then setting an error indicator in the transmission stream; (3) transmitting the transmission stream back to the one or more service nodes in a return route, where the one or more service nodes determine from the error indicator a miswired condition between the receiving switch element and a previous switch element or service node along the outbound route.
The one or more service nodes can record, store and tabulate the miswired condition and one or more additional miswired conditions. The transmission stream can store the one or more switch element fields for the one or more switch elements and the port fields for each the switch element separately for a path comprising the outbound route and a path comprising the return route.
The switch element fields can be designated by one field indicating a switch board set and one field designating a switch element in the switch board set. The method can be performed during an initialization process for the network. The one or more service nodes can include one or more processing computers. The one or more service nodes can include a single service node designated as a primary service node. Also, the primary service node can be a single processing computer.
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Bartfai Robert F.
Bender Carl A.
Herring Jay R.
Rash Nicholas P.
Reilly Kevin J.
Cutter Lawrence D.
Fleit Kain Gibbons Gutman & Bongini P.L.
Gonzalez Floyd A.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Tieu Binh
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