Automatic status polling failover or devices in a distributed network management hierarchy

摘要

Automatic failover methodology provides a mechanism whereby a central control unit, such as a management station, will automatically takeover interface status polling of objects of a collection station that is temporarily unreachable. This methodology is applicable to any distributed computing environment, such as a data communications network, in which it is desirable to have a central control unit assume the interface status polling operation of a temporarily inaccessible collection station. The collection station may be inaccessible due to the network on which the central control unit and the collection station reside being down or due to the collection station being down for maintenance.