Dell Products Inc.

Anandaraj Maharajan

Padmanabhan Narayanan

Anoop Ghanwani

Phaniraj Vattem

A bidirectional out-of-band management (OOBM) dongle comprises a serial port for receiving console traffic from a console port of a managed switch and an Ethernet port for receiving management port traffic from a management port of the managed switch. In operation, the OOBM dongle multiplexes, via an optional adapter, the console traffic and the management port traffic and generates Ethernet traffic that is then communicated, via an OOBM port on the dongle, to an OOBM switch port of an OOBM switch that acts as a power sourcing device for the OOBM dongle.

Integrated console and network management access using an out-of-band-management device

Described herein are systems and methods for host multihoming with no state synchronization between top-of-rack (ToR) switches coupled to multiple hosts. ToR switches of a multi-homing system share a virtual MAC address and respond to Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests and/or Neighbor Discovery (ND) solicitations for a default gateway IP address from the host with the virtual MAC address. Ports on a ToR switch may be configured either with a static ARP and/or ND entry, or be configured to learn via a discovery protocol. The lightweight host multihoming system may have modified flooding behavior, ARP/ND handling, and data path forwarding. ARP/ND traffic from a host is processed by a ToR switch, while other multicast traffic may be discarded. Embodiments of the host multihoming system provide a lightweight solution for software implementation with minimal changes imposed on the host or network design.

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Woodinville, WA, United States of America

Anandaraj Maharajan