Patent ID: 7984136
Filing Date: 2011-07-19
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for automatically determining locations of a plurality of interconnected processing modules, the method comprising: (a) determining a physical identifier for each processing module of a plurality of interconnected processing modules; (b) disabling communications with one of the processing modules such that communications with the one processing module are disabled on a first network, processing modules upstream from the one processing module are reachable by a control station on the first network, and processing modules downstream from the one processing module are not reachable by the control station on the first network; (c) sending a discover message to non-disabled processing modules reachable from the control station and receiving responses from the non-disabled processing modules that receive the discover message; (d) determining, based on the responses, a location of the disabled processing module; (e) enabling communications with the disabled processing module; and (f) repeating steps (b)-(e) for each of the processing modules to determine a location for each of the processing modules.