Radioport: A Radio Network for Monitoring and Diagnosing Computer Systems

A radio network is described for configuring, monitoring, and diagnosing the components of a computer system. Such a network offers several advantages: (a) It improves the robustness of the overall system by not having the monitoring functions rely on the interconnect of the monitored system; (b) by broadcasting information, it offers direct communication between the monitoring and monitored components thereby removing dependencies inherent to hierarchical and daisy-chained wired networks; (c) it does not rely on a physical interconnect thereby lowering implementation cost, offering non-intrusive monitoring, and improving reliability thanks to the lack of error- and failure-prone cables and connectors.

This report is an extended version of a paper presented at HOTI 2002, Stanford, California, August 2002. It received the  Most Interesting New Topic Award.