Vmware, Inc.

Bay Networks, Inc.

Ai-Lan Chang

Pramod John

Ilan Raab

Emmanuel W Jee

Guruprasad S Hadagali

Daniel J Lassig

Nam N Nguyen

Rendell K G Fong

Gilbert D Ho

A packet traversing on the computer network is received; session information is generated from the packet with the session information including a client network address and a server network address; the packet is associated with at least one object attribute from the directory by using the session information; and a security policy defined for the network environment is enforced by using the session information and the object attribute(s) to determine whether the packet violates the security policy.

Network security policy enforcement using application session information and object attributes

A method for determining the topology of a mixed-media network is provided. According to the method, the network is divided into communities of devices that support a common topology mechanism ('spheres'). On each sphere, one or more sphere topology agents generate and accumulate topology data for the devices on the sphere using the topology mechanism that is supported by the devices within the sphere. A global topology agent collects the topology data for each sphere from the various sphere agents and assembles the data to determine the global topology of the mixed-media network. The global topology agent begins by collecting data from a current sphere and identifies additional spheres based on data stored in boundary devices within the current sphere. The global topology agent then repeats the same process with the additional spheres until topology data has been collected from all of the spheres in the mixed-media network.

Method for determining the topology of a mixed-media network

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

Ai-Lan Chang