Patent ID: 9693252
Date: 2017-06-27
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04W,Y02D

Claim:
1. A method performed by a first computing device, the method comprising: maintaining a set of objects representing respective devices, each object comprising properties of a respective device represented thereby; performing a discovery protocol that operates at or above the Internet Protocol (IP) layer to discover a second computing device, and based on the discovery of the second computing device establishing a first IP connection between the first computing device and the second computing device, wherein the first IP connection is through a layer-2 link of the first computing device, the layer-2 link corresponding to a layer-2 protocol; exchanging application-layer data between the first computing device and the second computing device, wherein the exchanging is through the Internet Protocol (IP) connection; storing, in an object representing the second computing device, information about the second computing device provided by the performing of the discovery protocol; ending the first IP connection and retaining the information about the second computing device after the IP connection has ended, wherein the layer-2 link is ended based on the ending of the first IP connection; based at least in part on a determination that there is no IP connection between the first computing device and the second computing device, using a probe or heartbeat mechanism of the layer-2 protocol to perform monitoring for presence of the second computing device; maintaining availability information for the second computing device according to the monitoring, the availability information indicating whether the second computing device is available; and responding to receiving an indication that a service on the second computing device is needed by checking the availability information and based thereon initiating a second IP connection between the first computing device and the second computing device by establishing another layer-2 link.