Patent ID: 7296069

Claim:
A system for monitoring network faults using a LINUX operating system comprising: means for establishing an electrical connection to a computer network running the LINUX operating system; means for controlling data sent across the establishing means; means for directly querying the status of the establishing means by accessing data structures that store network fault monitoring data in real time for use by other software modules, wherein the network fault monitoring data storage includes a storage for global variables including a shutdown flag, a network mutex, and a poll mutex; means for locking the network mutex prior to tracking and storing the status of the establishing means; means for tracking the status of the establishing means, comprising: means for obtaining a current time in clock ticks since rebooting of the LINUX operating system; means for adding the configurable polling interval to the current time to obtain the start time of the next polling interval, wherein the polling interval is configurable by users; means for querying the status of each network interface card; means for recalculating the current time; means for unlocking the network mutex; means for determining if the current polling interval has expired; means for locking the network mutex if the current polling interval has expired; means for locking the poll mutex if the current polling interval has not expired; means for waiting until the current polling interval has expired; means for unlocking the poll mutex; and means for locking the network mutex; and means for storing, in real time, the status of the establishing means in a status database for use by other software modules.