JPH06120968A - Network management device and network constitution management system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To automatize the constitution management of a network by grasping the constitution of terminal equipments connected to the respective ports of HUB by using the transmission source addresses of the final reception data of the respective ports. CONSTITUTION:A constitution analysis part 63 gathers the transmission source addresses of the final reception data in the respective ports of the HUB with input from a timer 64 as a trigger, retrieves the name of the equipment to which the gathered transmission source address is imparted and stores the result in a memory 61 as a constitution information table.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a HUB with a management function.
The present invention relates to a network management device that collects management information from each port of a (relay device), analyzes the result, and grasps the configuration status of devices connected to a network.
The present invention also relates to a network configuration management method for grasping the configuration of terminal equipment connected to each port of the HUB.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, there has been an urgent need to establish a network management technique for integrally managing terminal devices on a network. For example, a LAN in an intelligent building
In (Local Area Network), several to dozens of HUBs are installed on each floor, and a large number of terminal devices can be connected to those HUBs. It happens frequently. For this reason,
A technology for grasping the entire network configuration in real time is required.

A conventional network management device and a conventional network configuration management method will be described below. As a conventional network management method, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No.
There is a method disclosed in 136537. Also, a conventional network management device can be easily imagined from the description in the same material.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an overall configuration of a network management system to which the present invention, a conventional network management device and a conventional network configuration management method are applied.

Reference numeral 1 is a transmission line, 10 (or 200) is a management device for managing a network, 20-22 are HUBs, 30
Is a multiport transceiver (hereinafter referred to as MPT), and 40 to 46 are terminal devices such as workstations and personal computers connected to the HUB or MPT.

FIG. 9 shows a configuration of a conventional network management device. Reference numeral 50 is an MMI unit that performs a man-machine interface with the user of the management device 200, and 70 is a transmission unit that creates a management packet and instructs its transmission.
Reference numeral 0 is a receiving unit that decodes the received management packet, 90 is a protocol processing unit that executes a procedure for transmitting and receiving the management packet between the management device 200 and a terminal device (not shown), and 210 is the received management packet. Is a configuration management unit for grasping the configuration of the entire network.

The configuration management unit 210 also includes a memory 61 for holding network configuration information, a memory access unit 62 for reading or writing the network configuration information stored in the memory 61, and a network configuration based on the received management packet. And a connection information analysis unit 220 for analyzing.

The operation of the network management device configured as described above will be described below with reference to the drawings.

When the management device 200 receives an instruction for grasping the configuration of the entire network via the MMI unit 50, the transmission unit 70 creates a management packet to be sent to each of the terminal devices 40 to 46 in FIG. Then, the protocol processing unit 70 is used to broadcast those management packets. The terminal device 4 that has received these management packets
0 to 46 immediately create a response packet and return the response packet to the management device 200.

In the HUB (20 to 22) which relays the response packet from the terminal equipment (40 to 46), connection information (information indicating the length of the cable between the HUB and the terminal equipment) is added to the response packet from the terminal equipment. , H to which the terminal is connected
It has a function of adding a port number of the UB, a flag indicating how many stages of the HUB are connected between the management device and the terminal device). For example, connection information is added to the response packet returned by the terminal device 42 of FIG. 2 in the HUB 21 and HUB 20, and the response packet received by the management device 200 has a packet structure as shown in FIG. Figure 1
The information of 230 to 232 of 0 is created by the terminal device 42, the connection information 233 is added to the HUB 21 which received this, and the connection information 234 is added to the HUB 20.
Is added.

The address etc. of the response packet to which the connection information is added in each HUB on the relay route is checked in the protocol processing unit 90 and the receiving unit 80 of the management device 200. Since the connection information 233 to 234 needs to be analyzed in detail in order to grasp the network configuration, it is sent to the configuration management unit 210.

The connection information analysis unit 220 of the configuration management unit 210
Then, the contents of the connection information fields 236 to 238 added in the HUB 21 and the contents of the connection information field added in the HUB 20 are sequentially analyzed. As a result of the analysis, for example, the order of the HUBs from the management device 200 to the terminal device 42, the port number of the HUB to which the terminal device 42 is connected, and the like are known. The analyzed configuration information is stored in the memory 61 by the memory access unit 62.

Since the network configuration information can be obtained by the above operation, for example, when the network configuration map is displayed to the user of the management apparatus 200, the MMI section 50 is stored in the memory 61. It can be realized by referring to the configured information via the memory access unit 62.

[0014]

However, in the above-described conventional configuration, the power of the terminal device is turned off, the function for transmitting the response packet to the terminal device is not mounted, and the like. If the response packet from the terminal device is not returned to the management apparatus 200, the information regarding the terminal device is missing from the configuration management unit 210, and the accurate network configuration cannot be grasped.

Further, in the conventional network configuration management method described above, the management packet is broadcast to all the terminal devices on the network, so that the network load becomes very large when the number of terminal devices is large. It is a danger. Furthermore, in each terminal device and HUB, an SNMP (Simple Network Man)
There is a problem in that a response packet is created in a unique format without using a standard management procedure such as a management protocol such as “agement Protocol”. Was there.

The present invention is to solve the above problems and provides a network management device and a network configuration management system capable of grasping the network configuration without exchanging a management packet between the management device and a terminal device. With the goal.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a network configuration management system capable of grasping the configuration of the entire network without providing the HUB or terminal equipment with complicated functions.

[0018]

In order to achieve this object, a network management device of the present invention comprises means for interfacing the network management device with its users, and terminal equipment connected to each port of the HUB. And a management packet transmitting means for creating a management packet corresponding to a management request instructed by the interface grasping means, or the interface grasping means for managing the configuration of And a management packet receiving means for decoding the management packet received via the management protocol processing means and notifying the interface means or the configuration grasping means. As a constituent element of the HUB, the source address of the communication data received at each port of the HUB is collected. An address extraction unit, a configuration analysis unit that analyzes a terminal device connected to each port of the HUB based on the transmission source address acquired by using the address extraction unit, and an analysis result of the configuration analysis unit, that is, a network configuration. The storage means for holding the data and the access means for reading and writing the configuration data held by the storage means are provided.

Further, in a first network configuration management system of the present invention, in the above network management device, the configuration analysis unit sets each source address of each port of the HUB collected by the address extraction unit The network configuration management system analyzes that the terminal device to which the source address is given is connected to the port and stores the result in the storage unit by using the access unit.

A second network management method of the present invention is the same as the first network configuration management method, wherein the source addresses of the respective ports of the HUB collected by the address extracting means are duplicated in a plurality of ports. In the above, the configuration analysis means analyzes that the terminal device to which the corresponding source address is assigned is relocated to the port whose source address has changed most recently among the overlapping ports, and as a result, Is a network configuration management system in which the access means is used to store in the storage means.

Further, a third network management system of the present invention is the above-mentioned first network configuration management system, wherein the configuration analysis means is related to a source address of each port of the HUB collected by the address extraction means, Check the change in each port within a certain period of time, if there are multiple source addresses on the same port and these source addresses do not overlap with the source address of another port, A network configuration management that analyzes that a plurality of terminal devices to which the transmission source address is assigned are connected to the corresponding port via a multi-port repeater and stores the result in the storage means using the access means The method.

[0022]

According to the present invention, by the above-mentioned configuration, the address extracting means collects the source address of each port held by the HUB (source address of the final data received by each port), and the source address is collected by the configuration analyzing means. It is possible to grasp the overall configuration of the network by searching for a terminal device corresponding to.

Further, even if the terminal device is moved from one port to another port, the presence / absence of the relocation can be determined by checking the presence / absence of the source address duplication in the configuration analysis means.

Further, even when the MPT is connected to a certain port, the configuration analyzing means analyzes the change history of the source address in the same port within a fixed time to judge the presence or absence of the MPT connection. be able to.

[0025]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 shows an outline of a network management system to which the present invention is applied. In the figure, 10 is a management device for managing the network, which has a configuration as shown in FIG. In FIG. 1, components corresponding to those of the conventional network management device shown in FIG. 6 are designated by the same reference numerals, and detailed description thereof is omitted.

Reference numeral 60 in FIG. 1 denotes a configuration management unit that manages the configuration status of the network to be managed, and as its constituents, it is stored in the memory 61 and the memory 61 for storing the network configuration information and the change history of the network configuration. A memory access unit 62 for reading or writing the created configuration information, a configuration analysis unit 63 for collecting and analyzing network configuration information, and a timer 64 for regularly instructing the collection of configuration information. Consists of.

It should be noted that a general-purpose workstation is used as the management device 10, and a program that operates on the workstation is created for each element in the management device 10 to realize the network management device of this embodiment. You can

The operation of the network management apparatus of this embodiment configured as described above will be described with reference to the drawings.

The user of the management device 10 registers the minimum necessary configuration information of the network to be managed in the management device 10 using the MMI section 50 as an initial setting. The registration information includes, for example, the connection relationship of the HUBs, the port number used for the connection between the HUBs, the terminal device and the address of the HUB, and the like. The registration information is stored in the memory 61 via the memory access unit 62 and managed by the configuration table 65 and the address registration table 66 as shown in FIG.

The entries in the configuration table 65 are HUB
The name, the port number of the HUB, the name of the device connected to the port, and the connected device name when the device connected to the port is a special device (another HUB, MPT, NMS, etc.). At the time of initial registration, information about port 2, port 3, and port 5 of Xhub, and port 4 and Zhub of Yhub.
Information of port 4 is registered, and the connection relationship between HUBs is held.

The entry of the address registration table 66 is
Device name and its MAC address (hardware address), and device type (terminal, HUB, MPT, N)
(MS, etc.). For example, the name is Xh
The MAC address of the ub device is addrX, indicating that the device is the HUB.

Since only the minimum necessary information is registered in the configuration table 65 at the time of initial setting, the configuration management unit 60 collects other detailed configuration information. Collecting configuration information
The procedure is as follows.

Upon receiving the timeout notification issued by the timer 64 at regular time intervals, the configuration analysis unit 63 sends port information (port number, port number of each port) to each HUB (20-22) in the network of FIG. The transmission unit 70 is instructed to collect a source MAC address of the final received data, a port state, etc.). For the HUB address, the configuration analysis unit 63 refers to the address registration table 66 stored in the memory 61, and the value is passed to the transmission unit 70 together with the collection instruction.

In the transmitting unit 70, a management packet for collecting port information for each HUB (GetNe of SNMP).
xt message). This management packet is S
Protocol processing unit 9 for executing the procedure of NMP protocol
0, and is sent to each of the destination HUBs (20-22).

The HUBs (20 to 22) that have received the SNMP GetNext message receive the response packet (S
NMP GetResponse message) is created and returned to the management device 10. This response packet includes port information of each HUB (port number, source MAC address of the last received data of each port, port status, etc.). It is assumed that the HUBs 20-22 have a function of managing port information. Also,
In the source MAC address, the source MAC address of the packet normally received last at the port is kept held (initial value is NULL).

The response packet from the HUB (20-22) is processed by the protocol processing unit 90 of the management apparatus 10 and then decoded by the receiving unit 80. When the response packet includes port information, the port information is passed to the configuration analysis unit 63 and analyzed in detail. The analysis result is stored in the memory 61 via the memory access unit 62.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing the outline of the operation procedure in the configuration analysis unit 63. The analysis procedure consists of three steps, Step 1 to Step 3, but Steps 2 and 3 can be omitted.

The process 100 shows the process of step 1, in which port information is collected from each HUB, the device name corresponding to the source MAC address of the final received data for each port of each HUB is searched, and the memory 61 is searched. For creating or updating the configuration table 65 stored in.

The process 110 represents the analysis process of step 2, which detects whether or not the terminal equipment connected to the port of the HUB has been relocated, and is stored in the memory 61 according to the relocation status. It is for correcting the configuration table 65.

The process 120 shows the analysis process of step 3, in which the MPT connected to the port of the HUB is detected,
This is for correcting the configuration table 65 stored in the memory 61 according to the actual connection status.

FIG. 5 is a detailed flowchart of the process 100, which includes the processes 101 to 103 and the process 1.
06 to process 109 are processes for sequentially collecting port information from each port of the HUB in the network. The collected port information is decrypted in process 103, and the source MAC address of the packet last received by the port is extracted. In process 104, the transmission source MA
The device name corresponding to the C address is retrieved from the address registration table 66 of the memory 61. The retrieved device name is
It is written as the value of the corresponding port number of the corresponding HUB name in the configuration table 65.

FIG. 6 shows a detailed flowchart of the process 110. First, in process 111, the configuration table 65 is searched for the same device name corresponding to a plurality of ports. If it does not exist, it is considered that the terminal device has not been moved, and the process 110 ends.

If the same device name is duplicated for different ports, it is considered that the terminal device has been relocated between those ports. In process 112, first, the terminal history table is referred to in order to clarify the port of the relocation destination.

FIG. 7 shows the terminal history table, the entries of which are the HUB name, port number, and sender M.
It consists of the time when the AC address changed (time of change), the names of all devices that have been connected to that port (terminal history), and the number of times the source MAC address changed to the corresponding device name MAC address (number of changes). . The information in the entry is
It is updated when the source MAC address of the HUB port changes and is held in the memory 61.

For example, the terminal history table 67 shows that the terminal device 41 (device name "B") exists for two different ports. That is, the terminal device 41 is detected at 12:00:30 on September 15 at the port 1 of the HUB 21 (device name “Yhub”), and H
9 at port 3 of UB22 (device name "Zhub")
This indicates that it was detected at 16: 30: 00: 00 on the 15th of the month.

In the process 112, the duplicated terminal device 41
(Device name “B”) compares the time (change time) set for the corresponding port, and determines that the port having the latest time is the transfer destination (in this case, port 3 of Zhub). As a result, the terminal device has been removed from the transfer source port (Yhub port 1), and therefore in step 113, the operation of deleting the connected device name of the transfer source port from the configuration table 65 is performed.

FIG. 8 shows a detailed flowchart of the process 120. First, in process 121, the terminal history table 67 is referred to, and a port to which a device whose number of changes is a certain number or more (for example, five or more) is connected is searched for.
If it does not exist, it is considered that the port to which the MPT is connected does not exist, and the processing 121 ends.

If there is a port whose number of changes exceeds a certain number, it is considered that the MPT is connected to the port. For example, in the terminal history table 67, Yhub
It is shown that the terminal device with the device name “D” was detected 23 times and the terminal device with the device name “E” was detected 31 times at the port 3 of the YUB. It is considered that the devices “D” and “E” are connected.

As a result, the port (Yh
The configuration information of the port 3) of the
It is modified to explicitly show that the MPT is connected. (As shown in the information table 65, “D” and “E” are registered as device names in the entry of the port 3 of Yhub, and MPT is set as a connection node of those terminal devices).

As described above, according to this embodiment, the management device 10 only collects the source MAC address from the HUB (20 to 22) and the terminal devices (40 to 4) in the network.
Since the configuration of 6) can be grasped, it is not necessary to transmit / receive the management packet between the management device 10 and the terminal devices (40 to 46). Therefore, it is possible to grasp the network configuration even when the power of the terminal device is turned off. In addition, the terminal devices (40 to 46) do not need the function of processing the management packet, and the network management system can be constructed at low cost.

Further, in the configuration analysis unit 63, processing 11
By executing 0, even if the terminal device is relocated between the ports, the relocation source and the relocation destination are automatically recognized and the configuration table 65 is corrected, so that the network management work is performed using the management device 10. There is also an effect that the work load on the person can be reduced.

Further, in the configuration analysis unit 63, the processing 120
Since the existence of MPT can be automatically recognized by executing the above, there is also an effect that it is possible to provide a network management system applicable to a network having a complicated configuration.

[0054]

As described above, according to the present invention, the address extracting means for collecting the source address of the last received packet at each port of the HUB, and the terminal connected to each port of the HUB based on the obtained source address. By providing a configuration analysis means for analyzing the device, a storage means for holding the analysis result of the configuration analysis means as network configuration data, and an access means for reading and writing the configuration data held by the storage means, the terminal device is provided. Irrespective of whether the operating status of the or the management function is installed in the terminal device,
This has the effect of being able to grasp the network configuration. Further, since the management packet flowing in the network is only between the network management device and each HUB, the load on the network can be reduced, and this is also an effective method for a large-scale network with many terminals.

Further, according to the present invention, even if the terminal equipment connected to the port is relocated, the configuration analysis means automatically searches for the existence of a source address that overlaps between the ports, so that the relocation source and the relocation destination are automatically Since this port can be recognized, there is also an effect that the work burden on the network operation administrator can be reduced.

Further, according to the present invention, M
HUB collected by address extraction means even if PT exists
The source address of each port of MP is automatically checked by checking the change in each port within a certain period.
Since the port to which T is connected can be recognized, there is an effect that the configuration can be easily grasped even for a more complicated network.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of a network management device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an overall configuration of a network management system to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a method for holding network configuration information according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a flowchart for explaining the operation of the network configuration management system in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a detailed flowchart for explaining the operation of the configuration analysis unit in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a detailed flowchart for explaining the operation of the configuration analysis unit in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a method of holding terminal history information according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a detailed flowchart for explaining the operation of the configuration analysis unit in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing a configuration of a conventional network management device.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a format of a management packet used by a conventional network management device.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Transmission Line 10 Management Device 20-22 HUB 30 Multi-Port Transceiver 40-46 Terminal 50 MMI Section 60 Configuration Management Section 61 Memory 62 Memory Access Section 63 Configuration Analysis Section 64 Timer 65 Configuration Table 66 Address Registration Table 67 Terminal History Table 70 Transmitter 80 Receiver 90 Protocol processing unit

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (72) Inventor Shintoshi Higaki No. 1006 Kadoma, Kadoma City, Osaka Prefecture Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (72) Atsushi Ishiba, No. 1006 Kadoma, Kadoma City Osaka Prefecture 72) Inventor Tomoko Izaki, 1006 Kadoma, Kadoma City, Osaka Prefecture Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. In a network management system in which a network management device manages a HUB that constitutes a network and terminal equipment connected to a port of the HUB, a means for interfacing the network management device and its user, and a HUB A configuration grasping unit for managing the configuration of the terminal device connected to each port; a management packet transmitting unit for creating a management packet corresponding to the management request instructed by the interface unit or the configuration grasping unit; Communication protocol processing means for transmitting and receiving a packet via a transmission line, and management packet receiving means for decoding the management packet received through the management protocol processing means and notifying the interface means or the configuration grasping means. And, as a component of the configuration grasping means, An address extraction unit that collects a transmission source address of communication data received at each port of the UB, and a terminal device connected to each port of the HUB is analyzed based on the transmission source address acquired by the address extraction unit. Configuration analysis means,
A network management device comprising: storage means for holding the analysis result of the configuration analysis means as network configuration data; and access means for reading and writing the configuration data held by the storage means. 2. The network management device according to claim 1, wherein for the source address of each port of the HUB collected by the address extracting unit, the configuration analyzing unit assigns the source address to each port. A network configuration management method of analyzing that the connected terminal device is connected and storing the result in the storage means by using the access means. 3. The network configuration management method according to claim 2, wherein when the source addresses of the respective ports of the HUB collected by the address extracting unit are duplicated in a plurality of ports, the configuration analyzing unit applies The terminal device to which the source address is assigned is analyzed as being transferred to the port whose source address has changed most recently among the overlapping ports, and the result is stored in the storage means using the access means. Network configuration management method to store in. 4. The network configuration management system according to claim 2, wherein the configuration analysis unit changes the source address of each port of the HUB collected by the address extraction unit within each port within a certain period. If there are multiple source addresses on the same port and these source addresses do not overlap with the source address of another port, check the corresponding port through the multi-port relay. A network configuration management method of analyzing that a plurality of terminal devices to which the source address is assigned are connected, and storing the result in the storage means using the access means.