KR100309102B1 - Method for appointing gateway to root for interface between dual network - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a 1394 network, and more particularly to a method for designating a gateway as a root for interworking a 1394 network with an external network, and to specify a physical layer protocol configuration packet of a gateway node. By setting the bit to route the gateway, it is possible to solve the problem of duplicate channels being used or over-allocating bandwidth to a specific node even when a reset occurs.

Description

METHOOD FOR APPOINTING GATEWAY TO ROOT FOR INTERFACE BETWEEN DUAL NETWORK}

The present invention relates to a 1394 network, and more particularly, to a method for designating a gateway as a root for interworking a 1394 network with an external network.

Familiarity with the multimedia environment has led to the movement of home networks that connect homes to networks. The method of forming a home network has been studied using various media, but high speed and wide bandwidth are indispensable elements in view of the characteristics of multimedia data. Considering these characteristics, IEEE 1394 is a strong force. Until now, the main focus is on tying home appliances. However, researches for forming a home network including a PC and interworking with an external access network have been conducted mainly in Europe and Japan.

In a typical 1394 home network that currently consists of PCs and home appliances (HD TVs, DVCRs, printers, scanners, satellite reception systems, etc.), either home appliance or PC can be the root, and generally Root performs the functions of Bus Manager (BM) and Isochronous Resource Manager (IRM). However, when a node power of a 1394 home network is turned off and reset, resource information, that is, channel information or bandwidth information, is lost until then, and power of a specific node may occur. When the reset occurs, data communication that is being performed between other adjacent nodes for topology reconstruction is interrupted, and it is inconvenient to perform data communication again after forming a new topology. .

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a method for easily managing a 1394 network by assigning a root function to a gateway that interworks an IEEE 1394 network with an external network.

It is still another object of the present invention to provide a route designation method capable of preventing data loss due to a reset occurring at an arbitrary node in the IEEE 1394 network.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a routing method of a gateway for interworking a 1394 network having a plurality of nodes with an external network.

A first step of designating a gateway as a route by setting a specific bit of a physical layer protocol configuration packet of the gateway node;

And a second process for the route-designated gateway to store and manage resource information in the 1394 network.

1 is a diagram illustrating a home network connected to an external network (ATM network / PSTN) through an indoor receiving device (also called a set top unit (STU)).

2 is a process flow up to designating a gateway as a route according to an embodiment of the invention.

3 illustrates a typical PHY configuration packet.

Hereinafter, a method of designating a gateway as a route for dual network interworking according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

First, FIG. 1 shows a diagram of a home network connected to an external network (ATM network / PSTN) through an indoor receiving device (STU) 26 and 20, also called a set top unit. Referring to FIG. 1, home appliances and PC peripherals such as DVCR 12, PC 14, telephone 16, and the like form a 1394 network via a 1394 bus, and the set top unit 26 is also a node. It is connected to the 1394 bus. The set top unit 26 operates as a gateway for interworking an external network such as an ATM network and a 1394 network through an ADSL or a cable modem.

Hereinafter, when the home network is configured as 1394 as shown in FIG. 1, a gateway interworking with an external network becomes a set top unit, and a method of providing a root function to the set top unit serving as a gateway will be described. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a process for designating a gateway as a route according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a general PHY configuration packet.

Referring to FIG. 2, first, in step 40, a gateway for interworking with an external network is connected to a 1394 network to become a set-top unit . In this case, from the standpoint of other 1394 nodes, the gateway is also recognized as one node. If there is a gateway access, the BM / Isochronous Resource Manager (IRM) function is provided to manage and store channel or bandwidth information in the set-top unit which is the gateway node in step 50. Generally, in a 1394 network, a specific node is a root and comprehensively performs BM or IRM functions, but each node may independently perform a root or BM or IRM function. Subsequently, in step 60, IEEE 1394 designates the set-top unit, which is the gateway node , as the root. As such , an example of a method of designating a gateway as a root may be performed by forcibly setting an R bit of a PHY configuration packet of a corresponding node to '1' as shown in FIG. 3. The R bit is a bit indicating that the node is designated as the root.

On the other hand, the BM / IRM function is provided to the gateway according to the above-described steps, and when the routing is completed, it is checked whether a reset occurs in step 70. The reset occurs when any node power is turned off at the nodes constituting the 1394 network. If a reset occurs due to power off of a specific node, it is checked in step 80 whether the gateway of the set-top unit is designated as the route. If the gateway of the set-top unit is designated as the root, resource information, that is, channel and bandwidth information is stored in the register of the set-top unit, thereby preventing loss of information. This is because the set-top unit is a device that is always operated because of its characteristics. When the set-top unit is a root, even if a reset occurs by another device in the middle, resource information, that is, information about a channel and a bandwidth, may be retained in the register of the set-top unit without loss due to the reset. After the reset, the 1394 network reconstructs the topology in step 90 by the set-top unit gateway, which is the root, to solve the problem of overlapping channels or over-allocating bandwidth.

As described above, the present invention provides a gateway to a set-top unit for interworking with an external network to constantly manage channel and bandwidth information, so that even if a reset occurs, the channel is overlapped or bandwidth is specified. This can solve the problem of over-allocating a node.

Claims (2)

A method for routing a gateway for interworking a 1394 network having a plurality of nodes with an external network, Set a specific bit of the physical layer protocol configuration packet of the gateway node to designate a gateway node that is a set-top unit among the plurality of nodes as a route to manage and store resource information in the 1394 network. The first step of granting the function of BM (Bus Manager) / ISM (Isochronous Resource Manager), And at least one of a plurality of nodes is reset, wherein the gateway to the routed set-top unit is configured to form a topology using resource information in the 1394 network. The method of claim 1, wherein a specific bit of the physical layer protocol configuration packet is an R bit.