Abstract: A fault zone definition mechanism groups components of an interconnect environment having a common point of dependence into a logical group defining a fault zone for the interconnect environment. The fault zone definition mechanism may be implemented in software, firmware or hardware, or a combination of two or more of software, firmware and hardware. A method for defining a fault zone is also disclosed.

Abstract: The present invention provides methods of checking for duplicate port globally unique identifiers during a discovery of a subnet of a system using a channel adapter. These methods allow a Subnet Manager, an Infiniband entity for managing the Infiniband topology, to detect invalid ports that have matching GUIDs. An additional feature is that a recently added port with a duplicate GUID will not replace an original port with the same GUID, but instead will be left out of the network.

Abstract: After a reset on a bus, the topologies of nodes on the bus before and after the reset are accessed to identify nodes that are new to the bus. A host identifies itself in both the new topology data and the old topology data. Referring to the connectedness between ports of a node and other ports in the new topology, similarly connected nodes in the old topology are identified as matching. Identifying data present in the old data can be assigned to the corresponding node in the new data. Any nodes in the new tree lacking a matching node will require requests over the bus to obtain its identification data.

Abstract: A method of reading configuration ROM in a serial bus device reads only portions of the ROM that are organized in a directory structure. Typically, the configuration ROM follows the IEEE 1212 and/or 1394 standards and uses an IEEE 1394 bus. Based on the information read from the configuration ROM, a connecting computer can determine the appropriate device driver to use for communications with the device.

Abstract: After a reset on a bus, the topologies of nodes on the bus before and after the reset are accessed to identify nodes that are new to the bus. A host identifies itself in both the new topology data and the old topology data. Referring to the connectedness between ports of a node and other ports in the new topology, similarly connected nodes in the old topology are identified as matching. Identifying data present in the old data can be assigned to the corresponding node in the new data. Any nodes in the new tree lacking a matching node will require requests over the bus to obtain its identification data.

Abstract: A method of reading configuration ROM in a serial bus device reads only portions of the ROM that are organized in a directory structure. Typically, the configuration ROM follows the IEEE 1212 and/or 1394 standards and uses an IEEE 1394 bus. Based on the information read from the configuration ROM, a connecting computer can determine the appropriate device driver to use for communications with the device.