摘要 |
A server for attributing network addresses to virtual machines in a parallel computing environment, whereby the server defines the available range of network addresses as one or more ranges defined in terms of a start address (211), an end address (212) and one or more status values (213) applying equally to every address in the range. Status values may be "in use" "available" "reserved" etc. When a virtual machine requests a set of ranges, the server selects an existing range comprising sufficient addresses to satisfy the request, and splits it into new ranges, one of which comprises exactly the number of requested address, this range being attributed to the requesting virtual machine. A beautification algorithm regularly parses the ranges to merge adjacent ranges having identical status. |