ABSTRACT
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1905.1 defines an abstraction layer (AL) for multiple home networking technologies that provides a common interface to the prevalent home networking technologies deployed in the field: power line communications, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and MoCA 1.1. The IEEE 1905.1 AL provides services to higher-level applications which enable them to manage networks of devices with multiple interfaces spanning different technology types. Such higher-level applications may be network management applications or applications optimising network traffic, which monitor available paths to destinations and their capacities, and route traffic optimally. One of the services required for such applications is topology discovery. IEEE 1905.1 devices may use the topology query message to request more detailed information from any other IEEE 1905.1 device in the network. The IEEE 1905.1 device receiving such a topology query must respond with a topology response. Network management applications may need information on the full network topology.
