Extreme Networks, Inc.

Arnel Lim

Sunil Praful Shah

Olen L Stokes

Donald Bruce Grosser, Jr

Prakash Kashyap

Kesavan Thiruvenkatasamy

Hanno Viehweger

Manpreet S Sandhu

Jim Pan

Ki-Hong Park

Sunil P Shah

Embodiments disclosed herein provide redundant connectivity between an Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS) access network and a Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) network. A first VPLS node is provided to function as an EAPS controller node. A second VPLS node is provided to function as an EAPS partner node. The first and second VPLS nodes are linked by a pseudowire and an EAPS shared-link. Additional EAPS nodes are also provided. The additional EAPS nodes are linked to each other and one of the additional EAPS nodes is designated as a master node. Links are also established between the VPLS nodes and the EAPS nodes such that one or more EAPS rings are formed. Each EAPS ring includes the shared-link between the first and second VPLS nodes. The EAPS rings are monitored to detect link failures. When a failure of the pseudowire shared-link between the first and second VPLS nodes is detected, all pseudowire links associated with the first VPLS node are disabled if any of the EAPS nodes has a path to both of the VPLS nodes. Otherwise, the existing pseudowire links associated with the first VPLS node are maintained.

Redundant ethernet automatic protection switching access to virtual private LAN services

Redundant Ethernet automatic protection switching access to virtual private LAN services

Embodiments of the invention describe apparatus, systems and methods for creating a protection switching domain having a control virtual local area network (vlan), a first set of high priority protected data vlans, and a second set of lower priority protected data vlans. When a fault is detected at a ring network, indicating a failed link between adjacent nodes, said fault is communicated to a master node of the ring network via the control vlan. Embodiments of the invention allow a user to specify a priority for each of its domains on a given set of ring ports. The higher priority protected data domains are serviced to completion prior to servicing the lower priority protected data domains, ensuring that data traffic convergence time does not increase across these vlans.

Priority domains for protection switching processes

A multicast data packet sent from a source node is received by a transit node. The multicast data packet includes a source address and a multicast group address. A hardware cache miss is detected at the transit node for the multicast data packet. The multicast data packet is hardware-flooded onto ports of the network. The flooding consists of forwarding a copy of the multicast data packet to neighbor nodes of the transit node based on virtual local area network (VLAN) membership. A cache-miss copy of the multicast data packet is sent to an out-of-line processing unit where it is processed in software. The processing includes establishing, via a hardware abstraction layer, a hardware cache entry for the multicast data packet. The cache-miss copy is not forwarded onto the network.

Convergence of multicast traffic

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Arnel Lim