Automating node discovery in a network

Currently, we have very few devices in our network. But, there will be a situation when there will be many nodes and managing them manually will be a difficult task. In a large cluster, there will be many nodes that are inactive or unserviceable. If we try to connect to them using a script that has the IP address of the clients hardcoded, we will meet with a lot of errors. This is why there is a need for automatic node detection that automatically detects the active nodes in a network and saves that information so that other programs can use it. One such program is MPICH, which we learned about in the previous chapter. As you might have learned, whenever we execute a program using MPICH, we have specified a filename that contains a list of active nodes that can be used for computations. However, if one of the nodes is inactive or unresponsive, the script will not work properly and will waste valuable computation resources.

For node discovery in a network...