JP2008131386A - Information processor - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information processor having a communication means, wherein a communication can be swiftly completed. <P>SOLUTION: In the information processor having a communication function of operating upon a receipt of a power supply from an external power source, the information processor has: a power abnormality detecting means for detecting an abnormality of the power supplied from the external power source to generate an interrupt signal upon the detection; a transmitting means for transmitting the interrupt signal to a communication packet sender-receiver means; a notice packet data creating means for creating notice data addressed to a specific notice destination as a specific packet data format of the communication packet sender-receiver means; a storing means for storing the notice data created by the notice packet data creating means in a notice packet data memory provided in the communication packet sender-receiver means; and a sending means for sending the data stored in the notice packet data memory onto a communication medium upon a receipt of the interrupt signal by the communication packet sender-receiver means. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus having communication means.

  Power over Ethernet (registered trademark) (hereinafter PoE), which supplies power to devices using Ethernet (registered trademark) wiring for data communications, has been standardized by IEEE 802.3af and has been developed on both the power supply side and the power reception side. Has appeared on the market. A power supply device (Power Sourcing Equipment, hereinafter referred to as PSE) that supplies power to a plurality of power receiving devices (hereinafter referred to as PD) has a power management function. When the power supply capacity is exceeded, control such as power supply stop for each port is performed based on a preset priority order. The power management status of the PSE can be acquired remotely by a method such as SNMP, for example, or can be notified asynchronously, and the PD manager can immediately know that the PD has stopped due to the power supply stoppage from the PSE.

  However, since a remote management function such as SNMP is not essential for PSE, an inexpensive product may not have the function. In this case, it is impossible to immediately detect the PD stop due to the PSE power supply stop. If the PD is not a client device but a wireless LAN access point or server device, a delay in detection leads to a delay in restoration of the provided service. Therefore, it is desirable for the PD itself to detect a power supply stop and notify an administrator or the like.

  IEEE 802.3af requires the PD to maintain a minimum load capacity, and the circuit must have a load capacitor. As a result, the PD can perform a communication operation with the power from the load capacitor without adding or changing the circuit even after the power supply of the PSE is stopped. However, the power of the load capacitor is supplied to the PD even when the supply voltage of the PSE falls within a specified range.

  In this state, power is not supplied from the PSE, but IEEE 802.3af stipulates that if this state continues for a certain time or longer, the PSE completely stops the power supply to the PD. Therefore, since there is a possibility of adverse effects during normal operation, there is a limit to the capacity of the load capacitor, and there is also a limit to the power after the power supply from the PSE is stopped.

  On the other hand, communication processing for performing notification includes detection of power supply stoppage by the power supply monitoring / notification program on the PD, generation of notification data, generation of a communication socket, writing to the socket, further UDP packetization by the OS, IP packet This is a time-consuming process because it is sent to the Ethernet (registered trademark) through the process of packetization and Ethernet (registered trademark) packetization.

  For this reason, the subject that communication is not guaranteed to be completed while the power from the load capacitor is supplied remains. On the other hand, as a method for reducing the overhead of packet generation, a method has been proposed in which data is generated and stored in advance as packet data of a communication protocol (see, for example, Patent Document 1).

JP-A-6-69957

  However, in the method described in Patent Document 1, since the transfer time from the storage device and the waiting time due to the scheduling of the OS are not considered, the problem of completing the communication within a limited time is not solved. .

  The present invention has been made in view of the above-described problems, and an object of the present invention is to enable quick communication completion.

  An information processing apparatus according to the present invention is an information processing apparatus having a communication function that operates by receiving power supplied from an external power source, and detects an abnormality in power supplied from the external power source and generates an interrupt signal upon detection. Power abnormality detection means, transmission means for transmitting the interrupt signal to a communication packet transmission / reception means, notification packet data generation means for generating notification data to a specific notification destination as a specific packet data format of the communication packet transmission / reception means, Storage means for storing the notification data generated by the notification packet data generation means in a notification packet data storage device provided in the communication packet transmission / reception means, and upon reception of the interrupt signal in the communication packet transmission / reception means, Transmits data stored in the notification packet data storage device on a communication medium And having a signal means.

  According to the present invention, regardless of the presence or absence of the remote management function of the PSE, it is possible to immediately notify the administrator or the like of the PD stop due to the power supply stop of the PSE. As a result, the administrator or the like can quickly restart the PD or switch to an alternative means, and the stop time of the service provided by the PD can be minimized. Further, since it is possible to clearly determine that the cause of the PD stoppage is due to the power supply capacity of the PSE, it is easy to increase the capacity of the PSE and change the configuration of the PSE and PD, and the stability of the service can be improved.

(First embodiment)
Hereinafter, a first configuration and operation of a PD suitable for implementing the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a detailed configuration example of an information processing apparatus having a communication function according to the present embodiment.
The CPU 120, the primary storage device 130, the secondary storage device 140, the input / output I / F 150, and the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 are connected to each other via the internal bus 170 and the PoE circuit via the power supply line 160. 100 is supplied with power. The PoE circuit 100 and the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 are connected by a signal line 180 for transmitting an interrupt signal.

  Here, the primary storage device 130 is a high-speed writable storage device represented by a RAM, and is loaded with an OS, various programs, and various data, and is also used as a work area for the OS and various programs. Further, data transmitted and received in the primary storage device 130 via an Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 described later is also temporarily read and written.

  The secondary storage device 140 is a non-volatile storage device represented by an FDD, HDD, flash memory, CD-ROM drive, etc. In addition to being used as a permanent storage area for the OS, various programs, and various data, It is also used as a storage area for various short-term data. A notification packet data generation program (not shown), which will be described later, is also stored on the secondary storage device 140 together with a file (not shown) storing the setting information, and is activated by the CPU 120.

  The input / output I / F 150 is an I / F for connecting user input / output devices such as a keyboard and external devices such as sensors. The PoE circuit 100 and the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 are the main circuits of this embodiment, and are responsible for supplying power to the information processing apparatus and communicating with external devices via the Ethernet (registered trademark).

  In this embodiment, for the sake of simplicity, PoE power is supplied using a pair of empty wires that are not used for data transmission of a signal cable defined by IEEE 802.3af. On the other hand, it may be configured to be superimposed on a wire pair used for data transmission similarly defined by IEEE 802.3af.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a detailed configuration example of the PoE circuit 100 according to the present embodiment.
The PoE control circuit 210 performs standard authentication and power class classification processing with the PSE according to IEEE 802.3af, and outputs the power supplied from the PSE. The load capacitor 220 is for maintaining the minimum load capacity defined in IEEE 802.3af, but is also a power source for performing communication after stopping the power supply from the PSE which is the basis of this embodiment. However, as described above, the capacity is limited to a range that does not adversely affect the normal capacity.

  The DC / DC converter 230 converts the supply voltage from the PSE into a predetermined voltage of the PD and supplies it to the power supply line 160. The voltage detection circuit 200 is a circuit unique to the present embodiment, and continuously measures whether or not the supply voltage from the PSE is within the standard range, and when the supply voltage falls outside the standard range (during detection). An interrupt signal is output to the signal line 180. Note that the power abnormality detection voltage may be set to a value inside the upper limit value / lower limit value of the standard voltage.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a detailed configuration example of the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 in the present embodiment.
After the power supply from the PoE circuit 100 is started, the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 adjusts the communication speed and the like with the opposite Ethernet (registered trademark) hub device in accordance with IEEE 802.3, and the Ethernet (registered trademark) is connected to the hub. Send and receive packets.

  The received Ethernet (registered trademark) packet is subjected to block code processing or the like by the Encoder / Decoder 300, the Frame Check Sequence (FCS) field is checked or the like by the MAC reception processing unit 310, and is put in the input buffer 330. On the other hand, the packet data stored in the output buffer 350 is transmitted after the FC transmission processing unit 320 performs FCS calculation, field addition, etc., and the encoder / decoder 300 performs block code processing and the like.

  For the transfer between the input buffer 330 and output buffer 350 and the primary storage device 130, the CPU 120 sets the address area on the primary storage device 130 to be read / written in the input / output control unit 340 and instructs the start. Via the bus I / F 360.

  The packet data storage device 370 and the interrupt control unit 380 are circuits unique to this embodiment. Packet data generated by a notification packet data generation program, which will be described later, is transferred to and stored in the packet data storage device 370. When an interrupt signal is input to the signal line 180, the interrupt control unit 380 transfers the notification packet data stored in the packet data storage device 370 to the output buffer 350.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing an example of an operation procedure of the notification packet data generation program in the present embodiment.
The notification packet data generation program detects an abnormality in the power supply from the PSE, generates communication packet data to be transmitted when notifying a PD administrator or the like, and stores the communication packet data in the packet data storage device 370. It is activated when the PD is activated or when a notification destination is changed.

  In step S400, the notification packet data generation program first reads settings from a setting file (not shown) stored on the secondary storage device 140. The settings are the IP address of the notification destination, the port number, and the content to be notified (such as a character string). If the PD has a user I / F, the setting value from the user may be input interactively. Thereafter, an Ethernet (registered trademark) (IEEE 802.3 MAC frame) packet is generated with the data obtained in step S400.

  Next, in step S410, a data part (body part) of the UDP packet is generated. The data may be the data obtained in step S400. Convert the character code to that of a specific notification destination, add a header in syslog format or SNMP TRAP application protocol level, or embed it in the data format if the notification destination is a syslog server or SNMP management station. May be. Notification format data may also be used.

  Next, in step S420, a header part of the UDP packet is generated. Although the data obtained in step S400 is used as the transmission destination / transmission source port number, any number may be used unless otherwise specified. The checksum value may be omitted with a value of 0. However, when the checksum is used, the destination IP address of the UDP pseudo header portion is necessary, so the value obtained in step S400 is used.

  Next, in step S430, a header part of the IP packet is generated. If the destination obtained in step S400 is not an IP address but a host name, the IP address is searched by DNS or the like. In addition, when using IPsec, a necessary option header is generated, and the header portion generated in the above steps S410 and S420 and data encryption are also performed.

  Next, in step S440, the sum of the data lengths of the header part and the data part generated in steps S410 to S430 above is obtained, and this is compared with the MTU of the route to the notification destination. As a result of the comparison, if the sum exceeds MTU, the process proceeds to step S450, the data part generated in step S410 is divided, and the process returns to step S420 to reattach the header part to each divided data part.

  On the other hand, as a result of the comparison in step S440, if the sum is MTU or less, the process proceeds to step S460, and an Ethernet (registered trademark) header part is generated. If the destination MAC address is unknown, it is acquired by ARP. When the notification destination is not in the same segment of Ethernet (registered trademark), the route information to the notification destination is checked and the MAC address of the relay destination router is used.

  Next, in step S470, each header part and data part generated above are connected, transferred to and stored in the packet data storage device 370 of the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110, and the process ends.

  Although the operation of the notification packet data generation program has been described above, an ICMP packet may be generated instead of a UDP packet. If the protocol uses Ethernet (registered trademark) as a medium, a packet of a protocol other than IP, such as IPX, may be generated. Note that the packet data storage device 370 may be configured by a non-volatile storage device and activation of the notification packet data generation program every time the PD is activated may be omitted. Conversely, the notification packet data generation program may be periodically started to update the contents of the notification packet each time.

  By including the PD status, for example, the status value of the OS of the PD, the connection status from the client, the supply voltage value from the PSE, etc. in the data, the status of the PD immediately before the power supply from the PSE is stopped is adjusted. Can be notified. For this purpose, when the data part is generated in step S410, the contents to be notified are not read from the setting file on the secondary storage device 140, but a program for acquiring various state values may be started.

  The PD in this embodiment operates as follows by the PoE circuit 100, the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110, and the notification packet data generation program described above. When the PD is connected to the PSE via an Ethernet (registered trademark) cable, the PoE circuit 100 performs IEEE 802.3af standard authentication and power classification processing with the PSE, and the power supplied from the PSE is transferred to the PD side. It starts when it is output. When the PD is activated, it activates the notification packet data generation program. Thereby, notification packet data is generated and stored in the packet data storage device 370.

  The voltage detection circuit 200 of the PoE circuit 100 always measures the supply voltage from the PSE. When it is detected that the voltage is out of the standard voltage range of IEEE802.3af due to a voltage drop or the like, the voltage detection circuit 200 outputs an interrupt signal on the signal line 180. This interrupt signal is input to the interrupt control unit 380 of the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110, and the interrupt control unit 380 transfers the notification packet data stored in the packet data storage device 370 to the output buffer 350 as an interrupt process. The packet data stored in the output buffer 350 is transmitted to the notification destination (on the communication medium) via the MAC transmission processing unit 320 and the Encoder / Decoder 300.

  As apparent from the above, the abnormality in the power supplied from the PSE is directly transmitted to the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit without the intervention of the OS or various programs, and the generated packet data stored in the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit is stored. Transferred to output buffer. As a result, notification can be made within the range of the capacity of the load capacitor 220 of the PoE circuit 100.

  The configuration and operation of the PD in the present embodiment have been described above. However, the present invention is not limited to the PD based on IEEE 802.3af, and can be applied to a communication apparatus having a dedicated power supply path. For example, in an apparatus using an external AC power supply, a voltage detection circuit and a capacitor are provided in the AC / DC converter instead of the PoE circuit 100 of the present embodiment, so that it is possible to notify the interruption of the external power supply.

(Second Embodiment)
In the first embodiment, a method of performing notification to an administrator or the like using a UDP packet has been described. However, when a firewall or NAT function is present on the communication path between the PD and the notification destination, the operation policy often does not allow the UDP packet to pass. An embodiment of the present invention suitable for such a communication environment will be described below as a second embodiment. Note that the configuration and operation of the PD in this embodiment are the same as those in the first embodiment except for the notification packet data generation program, and the description other than the notification packet data generation program is omitted.

  FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing an example of the operation procedure of the notification packet data generation program in this embodiment. The notification packet data generation program according to the present embodiment establishes a TCP session for notification with an information processing apparatus that is a notification destination, generates a TCP packet for notification from the state information, and generates a packet data storage device 370. Remember me. Further, a KeepAlive packet is periodically transmitted in order to prevent the TCP session from being disconnected due to a firewall or the like on the communication path being timed out.

  First, in step S600, the notification packet data generation program first reads settings from a setting file stored on the secondary storage device 140. The settings are the IP address, port number of the notification destination, and the contents (character string etc.) transmitted by the notification and KeepAlive.

  In step S605, a TCP session is established with the notification destination. In the present embodiment, the PD functions as both a TCP server and a client. Therefore, the server / client function is allocated to the notification destination in accordance with the setting of the firewall on the communication path, and the session is established in synchronization with the management program that receives the notification packet of the notification destination.

  Next, in step S610, two types of data portions of TCP packets for generating notification of power supply stop of PSE and for TCP KeepAlive (for maintaining TCP session) are generated. The data may be the data obtained in step S600, but processing such as adding a predetermined protocol header or embedding it in the data format when using a higher protocol of TCP, for example, HTTP, with the notification destination. Apply.

  Next, in step S615, a KeepAlive timer (not shown) for preventing the session from being disconnected is reset to a time slightly shorter than the session timeout time.

  Subsequently, in step S620, a TCP header portion is generated for each of the notification data and the keep alive data. The data obtained in step S600 is used as the transmission destination / transmission source port number and the transmission destination IP address for checksum calculation. The sequence number and ACK number are calculated from the immediately preceding values. If the TCP session is just established in step S605, the value is the value at the time of establishment, and if the process returns from step S665 described later, the value is the value of the ACK packet from the notification destination.

  Next, in step S625, a header part of the IP packet is generated. In step S630, the sum of the data lengths of the header portion and the data portion generated in steps S610, S620, and S625 described above is obtained for each of notification and for KeepAlive, and is compared with the MTU of the route to the notification destination.

  As a result of this comparison, if the sum exceeds MTU, the process proceeds to step S635, the data part generated in step S610 is divided, and the process returns to step S620 to reattach the header part to each divided data part. On the other hand, as a result of the comparison in step S630, if the sum is MTU or less, the process proceeds to step S640, and an Ethernet (registered trademark) header part is generated.

  Next, in step S645, each header part and data part generated above are connected, and the notification packet is transferred to the packet data storage device 370 of the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 and stored. Thereby, the interrupt signal from the PoE circuit 100 is transmitted. The KeepAlive packet is held on the primary storage device 130, and when the KeepAlive timer expires, it is sent to the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 via the internal bus 170 and sent to the notification destination.

  Next, in step S650, it is determined whether a notification packet is transmitted. If the result of this determination is that it has been transmitted, the process returns to step S615, the timer is reset, and the notification / KeepAlive packet generation flow is repeated. However, since the notification packet is transmitted when an abnormality in the power supply from the PSE is detected, the PD itself stops and the notification packet data generation program is also forcibly stopped and the process does not return to step S615. There is also. Conversely, when the process returns to step S615, the PSE power supply stoppage is very temporary and does not affect the operation of the PD. Since retransmission of the notification packet is meaningless, ACK confirmation from the notification destination of the notification packet is not performed.

  On the other hand, if the result of determination in step S650 is that a notification packet has not been transmitted, processing proceeds to step S655, where it is determined whether or not the KeepAlive timer has expired. If the result of this determination is that the KeepAlive timer has not expired, processing returns to step S650. On the other hand, if the result of determination in step S655 is that the KeepAlive timer has expired, the process proceeds to step S660, where the keepalive packet is sent to the Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 110 and sent to the notification destination.

  Next, in step S665, it is determined whether ACK is received from the notification destination. If the result of this determination is that ACK has been received from the notification destination, processing returns to step S615 and the operation is repeated. On the other hand, if the result of determination in step S665 is that ACK has not been received from the notification destination, processing proceeds to step S670, where it is determined whether or not a retransmission timeout has been reached. If the result of this determination is that the retransmission timeout has not been reached, processing returns to step S660 to retransmit the KeepAlive packet.

  On the other hand, as a result of the determination in step S670, if the retransmission timeout is reached, it is considered that a failure has occurred in the notification destination or the router on the route. Therefore, the process proceeds to step S675, and error processing such as restarting the notification packet data generation program by changing the notification destination is performed, and the operation ends.

  The operation of the notification packet data generation program in the present embodiment has been described above. However, the return destination after receiving the ACK in step S665 is set to step S610, and the contents to be sent in the notification / KeepAlive packet are updated each time. May be. By setting the content to be sent to the PD status, the KeepAlive packet can be used for periodic status notification when the power supply is normal. In that case, the expiration value of the KeepAlive timer may be sufficiently shorter than the timeout value of the communication connection to shorten the state notification interval.

(Other embodiments according to the present invention)
Each unit constituting the information processing apparatus and each step of the information processing method in the embodiment of the present invention described above can be realized by operating a program stored in a RAM or a ROM of a computer. This program and a computer-readable recording medium recording the program are included in the present invention.

  Further, the present invention can be implemented as, for example, a system, apparatus, method, program, or recording medium. Specifically, the present invention may be applied to a system including a plurality of devices. The present invention may be applied to an apparatus composed of a single device.

  Note that the present invention supplies a software program (in the embodiment, a program corresponding to the flowcharts shown in FIGS. 4 and 5) that realizes the functions of the above-described embodiments directly or remotely to a system or apparatus. This includes the case where the system or the computer of the apparatus is also achieved by reading and executing the supplied program code.

  Accordingly, since the functions of the present invention are implemented by computer, the program code installed in the computer also implements the present invention. In other words, the present invention includes a computer program itself for realizing the functional processing of the present invention.

  In that case, as long as it has the function of a program, it may be in the form of object code, a program executed by an interpreter, script data supplied to the OS, and the like.

  Examples of the recording medium for supplying the program include a floppy (registered trademark) disk, a hard disk, an optical disk, and a magneto-optical disk. Further, there are MO, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, magnetic tape, nonvolatile memory card, ROM, DVD (DVD-ROM, DVD-R) and the like.

  As another program supply method, there is a method of connecting to a homepage on the Internet using a browser of a client computer. The computer program itself of the present invention or a compressed file including an automatic installation function can be downloaded from the homepage by downloading it to a recording medium such as a hard disk.

  It can also be realized by dividing the program code constituting the program of the present invention into a plurality of files and downloading each file from a different homepage. That is, a WWW server that allows a plurality of users to download a program file for realizing the functional processing of the present invention on a computer is also included in the present invention.

  As another method, the program of the present invention is encrypted, stored in a recording medium such as a CD-ROM, distributed to users, and encrypted from a homepage via the Internet to users who have cleared predetermined conditions. Download the key information to be solved. It is also possible to execute the encrypted program by using the key information and install the program on a computer.

  Further, the functions of the above-described embodiments are realized by the computer executing the read program. Furthermore, based on the instructions of the program, an OS or the like running on the computer performs part or all of the actual processing, and the functions of the above-described embodiments can be realized by the processing.

  As another method, the program read from the recording medium is first written in a memory provided in a function expansion board inserted into the computer or a function expansion unit connected to the computer. Then, based on the instructions of the program, the CPU or the like provided in the function expansion board or function expansion unit performs part or all of the actual processing, and the functions of the above-described embodiments are also realized by the processing.

It is a block diagram which shows the structural example of the information processing apparatus in the 1st Embodiment of this invention. It is a block diagram which shows the detailed structural example of the PoE circuit in the 1st Embodiment of this invention. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a detailed configuration example of an Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit according to a first embodiment of the present invention. It is a flowchart which shows an example of the procedure of the operation | movement of the notification packet data generation program in the 1st Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows an example of the procedure of the operation | movement of the notification packet data generation program in the 2nd Embodiment of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

100 PoE circuit 110 Ethernet (registered trademark) circuit 120 CPU
130 Primary storage device 140 Secondary storage device 150 Input / output I / F
160 Power Line 170 Bus 180 Signal Line 200 Voltage Detection Circuit 210 PoE Control Circuit 220 Load Capacitor 230 DC / DC Converter 300 Encoder / Decoder
310 MAC reception processing unit 320 MAC transmission processing unit 330 input buffer 340 input / output control unit 350 output buffer 360 bus I / F
370 Notification packet data storage device 380 Interrupt control unit

Claims (7)

An information processing apparatus having a communication function that operates in response to power supply from an external power source,
A power abnormality detection means for detecting an abnormality in power supplied from the external power source and generating an interrupt signal upon detection;
Transmission means for transmitting the interrupt signal to a communication packet transmitting / receiving means;
Notification packet data generating means for generating notification data to a specific notification destination as a specific packet data format of the communication packet transmitting / receiving means;
Storage means for storing notification data generated by the notification packet data generation means in a notification packet data storage device provided in the communication packet transmitting / receiving means;
An information processing apparatus, comprising: a transmission unit configured to transmit data stored in the notification packet data storage device onto a communication medium when the communication packet transmission / reception unit receives the interrupt signal.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the notification packet data generation unit generates UDP packet data.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the notification packet data generation unit generates data in a syslog protocol format as a body part of the UDP packet data.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the notification packet data generation unit generates TRAP or Notification format data of an SNMP protocol as a body part of the UDP packet data.   The notification packet data generation means further comprises an establishment means for establishing a TCP session with a notification destination, and generates TCP packet data from session state information established by the establishment means. The information processing apparatus according to 1.   The notification packet data generation means also generates a TCP packet for maintaining a TCP session, periodically transmits and receives a session maintenance packet, updates the TCP communication state, and generates a notification packet and a session maintenance packet again. The information processing apparatus according to claim 5.   The information processing apparatus according to any one of claims 2 to 6, wherein the notification packet data generation unit further generates packet data in an IEEE 802.3 MAC frame format.

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