Patent ID: 6920509

Claim:
A device information acquisition method for acquiring device information from devices connected to a network constituted by a local bus or a plurality of buses including the local bus and one or more remote buses connected to the local bus through bridges, comprising: the discrimination step of discriminating whether the network includes one or more remote buses, the bus ID acquisition step of acquiring a bus ID assigned to each of the remote buses, the information acquisition step of acquiring device information from all devices connected to the network, and the information discarding step of, when at least one of the remote buses is disconnected from the network, discarding device information of devices connected to the disconnected remote bus, wherein if it is discriminated in the discrimination step that the network does not include one or more remote buses, the information acquisition step is executed with respect to all devices connected to the local bus, and if it is discriminated in the discrimination step that the network is constituted by one or more remote buses, the information acquisition step is executed with respect to all devices connected to a bus having a bus ID acquired in the bus ID acquisition step, wherein a counting node having a counter indicating a number of times of occurrence of bus initialization is connected to each bus of the network, wherein the method further comprises the acquisition step of periodically acquiring a value of a counter of the counting node corresponding to a remote bus, and wherein the information acquisition step is performed again with respect to each of the devices connected to a remote bus when a value different from the previously acquired value is acquired in the acquisition step for that remote bus.