A method of operating a network subnet manager

摘要

The invention relates to a method of operating a network subnet manager, in particular Infiniband network subnet manager in a subnet of a network.;The subnet manager is a software entity with the task of managing, for example Infiniband subnet and can reside on any one node. The subnet manager discovers the topology of the subnet that it manages, assigns a subnet ID to each port, assigns an address to each port in the subnet, establishes the possible path between all end nodes in the subnet, sets QoS parameters and sweeps the subnet on a regular basis looking for topology changes. Only one subnet manager entity can be master within a subnet.;A problem related with this specification is that a specific vendor implementation may exist with many features and internal functionality that are not specified in the network specification. If such a subnet manager looses its exclusivity because another subnet manager enters the subnet, having higher priority, the additional features from the vendor implementation can no longer be used in the subnet.;The solution according to the invention solves this problem by allowing a subnet manager that has a lower hierarchy level and thus lower priority to maintain its managing operation by becoming the master subnet manager again.