Patent ID: 8155120

Claim:
A method of identifying functionalities in at least one control board in an appliance for performing a useful cycle of operation on a physical article, wherein the at least one control board has software architecture configured for communication on a network including other control boards or clients, and the at least one control board has at least one functionality from a universe of functionalities, the method comprising: forming a message comprising a collection of bytes wherein at least one byte is predefined to contain a unique identifier associated with each instance of the at least one functionality on the network, setting the at least one byte to a single unique value corresponding to the unique identifier, and sending the message over the network from the at least one control board to affirm the existence of each instance of the at least one functionality on the network based on the value of the at least one byte so that one instance of the at least one functionality is uniquely identifiable among more than one instance of the same functionality on the network and messaging regarding the one instance is more efficient using the single unique value than using more than one value to identify the one instance.