Patent ID: 7698396

Claim:
A method of automatically recognizing a network configuration, for automatically recognizing a device configuration on a network system having a network node including at least one or more intelligent network devices each implementing an SNMP agent and a management information base, the method comprising: a first step of sending an ICMP echo request from an administrator terminal implementing an SNMP manager to individual network devices in the network node, and detecting existence and non-existence of network devices on the basis of responses therefrom, the administrator terminal implementing an SNMP manager, wherein the network devices include at least one device having plural IP addresses except for a router; a second step of creating plural different SNMP messages each for inquiring whether or not the network devices support IP forwarding function and one or more of management information bases included in each SNMP message wherein the management information bases (MIBs) include a bridge MIB a repeater MIB and a printer MIB, sending the plural SNMP messages one by one to the SNMP agents in network devices of which existence was detected to exist in the first step, and detecting the types of the network devices in the network node based on information of success and failure of sending and receiving the plural SNMP messages and based on combinations of information stored in management information bases included in the received SNMP messages, wherein the types of the individual network devices and roles of the individual network devices in the network node are determined based on the combinations of the information stored in the management information bases included in the received SNMP messages and wherein the type of device does not indicate the role of device primarily in terms of the device having the plural IP addresses except for the routers; a third step of acquiring a set of physical addresses of network devices connected to ports of a network devices from the management information base of the network device, the network device being a type of device to have a bridge function; a fourth step of acquiring information as to physical IP address correspondence from the management information base of a network device having a routing function; and a fifth step of recognizing at an IP level the network devices connected to each of the ports of the network device having a bridge function, based on the acquired information as to physical-IP address correspondence.