Abstract: The invention relates to a method for operating a local network, particularly an Ethernet network, having redundancy properties, wherein in a closed ring a redundancy manager monitors the sections of said ring, and wherein according to the invention at least one additional ring is connected as a partial ring which does not contain a redundancy manager, and segment controllers at both ends of the partial ring take on the monitoring of said partial ring by sending control packets into said partial ring.

Abstract: The invention relates to a method for operating a network as well as a network comprising at least one switch (400) and network infrastructure devices that are connected to said at least one switch (400) which is controlled by a control unit (700). According to the invention, a redundant unit (550) that is connected between the switch (400) and the control unit (700) analyzes the data stream between the switch (400) and the control unit (700), and data is inserted into and/or is removed from the data stream in accordance with the result of the analysis.

Abstract: In a network having a plurality of nodes each with at least two ports and lines or links connecting the ports in a ring. The improvement wherein one of the nodes is configured as a ring manager capable of configuring the other nodes via the links. Thus starting from a node used as ring manager the redundancy protocol of the other nodes is automatically configured via the lines by means of data packets containing the configuration data, which data packets are sent out via the lines by the ring manager.

Abstract: A method of dealing with interruptions in a data network with a ring structure, for example an Ethernet ring, in which requisition packets are transmitted by network nodes. adjacent an interrupted ring conductor to transfer the interruption manager function from a previous node to one of the two nodes adjoining the interruption. The function of interruption manager is thus dynamically passed from one node to another.