Reconfiguration of protocol stacks and/or frame type assignments in a network interface device

DETAILED DESCRIPTION These needs are addressed by the present invention, in which the protocol stacks loaded in a network device and/or the frame type assigned to each loaded protocol stack can be dynamically reconfigured from a remote device regardless of the protocol used by the remote device.
In a first aspect, the present invention is a method for reconfiguring frame type assignments for protocol stack modules in a network interface device which is interfaced to a local area network (LAN).
An initialization process is executed which loads protocol stack modules and assigns frame types to each of the loaded protocol stack modules based on configuration information regarding the protocols and frame types used on the LAN.
The network interface device receives packets including data and address information from the LAN and determines whether a received packet is a configuration packet by detecting whether the packet is addressed to the predetermined address assigned to the network interface.
In particular, the device first detects if the packet is addressed and, if so, detects whether an identifying "stamp" corresponds to a predetermined address (e.
g.
, a reserved IPX socket number).
In response to a determination that the received packet is a configuration packet, the configuration information is altered using the data in the configuration packet.
The configuration of at least one of (i) the loaded protocol stacks and (ii) the frame type assignments is then changed using the altered configuration information.
For example, the initialization process may be reexecuted using the altered configuration information.
In the preferred form, a query request is received first before new configuration data is received, and a response to the query is sent to let a user at a remote computer know what the current settings are.
Further, in the preferred form, the configuration information may be altered to load different protocol stacks in addition to assigning different frame types.
By virtue of this arrangement, configuration information can be altered without editing a configuration file at the peripheral