Patent ID: 7082135
Filing Date: 2006-07-25
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of expandable network slot addressing to provide topological information for a network, comprising: providing a platform having addressable slots for data communication; providing a first tier device in at least one of the slots; connecting at least one second tier device to the first tier device; assigning an extendable address to each of the first and second tier devices, each address including a slot address segment which indicates which slot each of the devices resides in or is connected to at the modular platform, a depth segment which indicates which layer in the topology the device is located in and a number of address bytes that are present, and an address byte segment which indicates where in the topology the device is located and provides each of the devices with a unique address so that each of the devices attached to the platform can be addressed and its topological position can be inferred from the address; the method further comprising: defining the extendable address as a series of bytes; and representing the extendable address as <address><depth><address byte 1> . . . <address byte n>, where n is equal to a death value.