Patent ID: 7668117

Claim:
A method to discover and monitor a collection of nodes in a downhole network, the downhole network comprising a plurality of downhole nodes positioned along a drill string, including at least a first downhole node and a second downhole node, the method comprising: receiving a first data packet originating from the first downhole node; reading, from the first packet, a first unique identifier and a first hop count associated with the first downhole node; creating a first entry in a network topology table corresponding to the first downhole node and storing the first unique identifier and the first hop count; receiving, after the first data packet, a second data packet originating from the second downhole node; reading, from the second packet, a second unique identifier and a second hop count associated with the second downhole node; creating a second entry in the network topology table corresponding to the second downhole node and storing the second unique identifier and the second hop count; and modifying the first entry in the event the second hop count conflicts with the first hop count.