CONTROLLING MULTIPLE NODES TO EXECUTE MESSAGES ONLY ONCE, WHICH ARE DIVIDED INTO GROUPS, OR USING SNMP, OR A COMBINATION THEREOF

摘要

A broadcast satellite network (200) transmits from a source (201) to multiplerouter nodes (230) digital real-time program information and best-effort data.The router nodes are specifically suited for extracting best-effort datastreams from the multiplexed signal received via, e.g., a satellite. A numberof management techniques are disclosed. According to one technique, a packet(150) is formed having a network layer header (152), including a destinationaddress for routing a packet to a destination, a second header identifying asyntax and semantic by which a payload of the packet may be parsed in apredefined fashion (156), and a payload (158) containing a command to beexecuted by each of one or more to-be-managed nodes (230) to which the packetis destined. The packet is transmitted a plural amount of times to a pluralityof nodes, including the one or more to-be-managed nodes, but the command inthe particular packet is executed only a single time. According to othertechniques, the nodes (230) are divided into groups. In one technique, aunique identifier is assigned to each group and the packet containing thecommand contains the identifier. The packet is transmitted once but receivedby all nodes, including the group of nodes to which the same identifier wasassigned. Only those nodes of the group with the same identifier execute thecommand. According to another embodiment, a manager node (212) maintains alist of the addresses of all nodes in a group and automatically transmits thepacket once to each address, thereby enabling automatic communication of thesame packet to multiple nodes.