Patent ID: 8243609
Filing Date: 2012-08-14
Classification: B60W,H04L

Abstract:
1. Apparatus for monitoring a status of nodes of a communication network, the apparatus comprising: means for determining first node status data at a first node by causing said first node to diagnose its own status and the status of at least one second node; means for sending the first node status data to at least one other node; means for receiving second node status data from at least one other node, said sending and receiving being performed periodically in communication rounds; means for determining node status evaluation data for the first node based on the determined first node status data and the received second node status data; means for determining that a certain node is faulty based on the node status evaluation data; means for initializing an outage counter, when the certain node is detected as faulty after a predetermined number of communication rounds in which the certain node was working correctly; means for incrementing the outage counter in each communication round in which the node remains faulty after the initialization of the outage counter; and means for resetting the outage counter when it is detected that the certain node was working correctly in a predetermined number of previous communication rounds.