UPDATING ROUTING AND OUTAGE INFORMATION IN A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

摘要

A method of updating routing information in a network, where reboot information of other nodes in the network is used to determine whether a given node has recent route updates. If the reboot information indicates the given node has not recently rebooted, then routing information from that given node is used to update the routing information of the comparing node. The reboot information may be a reboot counter which is incremented by a node in response to the node going through a reboot process. When a node reboots, it may request the reboot counter from neighboring nodes. The received reboot counter is compared to the stored reboot counter for at least one node. The rebooting node may choose to receive routing information from a node which has not had its reboot counter changed from the stored reboot counter. In the event none of the neighboring nodes have an unchanged reboot counter, requests may be made for the reboot counters of other nodes, which may be compared to the corresponding stored reboot counters, until the rebooting node discovers a node which has not recently rebooted according to the reboot counter, and may then download routing information from that node. After power is restored to a node in a utility network, that node employs one or more of its neighboring nodes as proxies to route a message to a central control facility of the utility.