Calculating a checksum with inactive networking components in a computing system

• US 8,943,199 B2
• Filed: 01/14/2013
• Issued: 01/27/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 02/09/2012
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Aho, Michael E., Chen, Dong, Eisley, Noel A., Gooding, Thomas M., Heidelberger, Philip, Tauferner, Andrew T.
• Primary Examiner(s): Mejia, Anthony
• Application Number:
  US13/740,525
• Publication Number:
  US 20130212258A1
• Time in Patent Office: 743 Days
• Field of Search: 709/224, 709/200
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/00 Arrangements for detecting or preventing errors in the information received correcting synchronisation H04L7/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0061 Error detection codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation

Abstract

Calculating a checksum utilizing inactive networking components in a computing system, including: identifying, by a checksum distribution manager, an inactive networking component, wherein the inactive networking component includes a checksum calculation engine for computing a checksum; sending, to the inactive networking component by the checksum distribution manager, metadata describing a block of data to be transmitted by an active networking component; calculating, by the inactive networking component, a checksum for the block of data; transmitting, to the checksum distribution manager from the inactive networking component, the checksum for the block of data; and sending, by the active networking component, a data communications message that includes the block of data and the checksum for the block of data.

Claims

1. A method of calculating a checksum for a block of data to be transmitted over a data communications network, the method comprising:

identifying, by a checksum distribution manager, an inactive networking component that will not be utilized to transmit any portion of the block of data over the data communications network, wherein the inactive networking component includes a checksum calculation engine for computing a checksum, the inactive networking component comprising a network adapter;

sending, to the inactive networking component from the checksum distribution manager, metadata describing a block of data;

calculating, by the inactive networking component, a checksum for the block of data; and

transmitting, to the checksum distribution manager from the inactive networking component, the checksum for the block of data.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the block of data is data to be transmitted by an active networking component, the method further comprising:

sending, by the active networking component, a data communications message that includes the block of data and the checksum for the block of data.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the block of data is data that is received by an active networking component.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying an inactive networking component includes a identifying a networking component that is not coupled to a data communications network.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the metadata describing the block of data includes an address in memory wherein the block of data is stored and information describing the size of the data block.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising reading, by the inactive networking component, an amount of data equal to the size of the data block from the address in memory where the block of data is stored.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein transmitting the checksum for the block of data further comprises writing, by the inactive networking component, the checksum for the block of data into a location in memory specified by the checksum distribution manager.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein transmitting the checksum for the block of data further comprises further comprises reading, by the checksum distribution manager, the checksum from memory in the inactive networking component.