| 摘要 |
A pool of multimedia servers, which may be geographically diverse, are available to be allocated to serve one of at least two ELANs served by an ELAN contronect network. These multimedia servers are a) connected to, b) dynamically allocated to sub-ELANs, and c) managed by, a multimedia server manager, which is included as part of the ELAN contronect network. In particular, each of the multimedia servers is capable of having its addresses dynamically reconfigured in response to commands from the multimedia server manager to match that of an ELAN to which it is being made available, so that the multimedia server becomes a part of that ELAN. The multimedia server manager obtains a layer-3 address from address server 427 of the ELAN contronect network which it then assigns to the multimedia server so that the multimedia server appears to be a part of the ELAN to which it is assigned to serve. The multimedia server manager also supplies to the multimedia server the LES and BUS address of a sub-ELAN of the ELAN to which it is assigned to serve. The multimedia server can then join with the LES and BUS as a LEC in that sub-ELAN.
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