Cisco Technology, Inc.

Bruce Stuart Davie

Michael V DiBiasio

David R Oran

Jonathan David Rosenberg

Daniel George Wing

Jan Medved

Jining Tian

Jeremy Lawrence

John Restrick

David Anthony Hughes

Eric C Rosen

David Delano Ward

Stefano Benedetto Previdi

James Neil Guichard

Stewart Frederick Bryant

George Swallow

Anna Charny

Ian Michael Charles Shand

Subhasri Dhesikan

Jim Guichard

Luca Martini

Carol Etta Iturralde

Frederick Juergens Baker

Daniel C Tappan

Steven Vincent Luong

John Mullooly

William R Foster

Roger Levesque

Gerhard Wieser

John J Mullooly

In system of networks that are not fully meshed with each other and that are capable of processing distributed hash table (DHT) Put and Get messages, message flooding of GET messages is limited by maintaining a list of DHTs the GET has visited. Also, PUT messages include not only the storage location key in the home network but also a list of networks that the PUT has visited, in essence establishing a dynamically changing path within the PUT back to the home network.

Limited broadcast, peering among DHTs, broadcast put of limited content only

In one embodiment, a reservation proxy monitors for received connectivity check messages or beginning-of-media-flow indication messages. When either type of message is observed, the reservation proxy requests resource allocation for a media flow associated with the received message. The amount of resource allocation requested may be coordinated by exchanging messages with a call controller or policy server for one of the endpoints of the media flow, or the amount of resource allocation may be identified within the received message.

Triggering bandwidth reservation and priority remarking

A technique enables resources to be shared among data flows that may have different senders (sources) and/or different receivers (destinations) in a data network. Identifiers are associated with data flows and used to indicate whether resources may be shared between data flows. The identifiers are carried in signaling messages used to reserve resources for data flows. An existing data flow that is associated with an identifier that matches an identifier associated with a new data flow is allowed to share resources its resources with the new data flow.

Mechanism for sharing resources among different senders and receivers

In a tiered system of networks capable of processing distributed hash table (DHT) Put and Get messages, if a sending network of a Put or Get is at a tier below a subject tier at which a subject network receiving the message is located, the message is forwarded to networks at tiers below the subject tier. On the other hand, if the sending network is at a tier equal to or above the subject tier, the message is forwarded to all networks in the system other than the sending network.

Hierarchical flooding among peering overlay networks

According to one aspect of the present invention, a method includes obtaining a first advertisement at a first provider edge (PE) device from a first customer edge (CE) device that is associated with a virtual private network, and sending a second advertisement on a control plane path associated with a border gateway protocol after obtaining the first advertisement. The first PE device has a routing and forwarding table. The first advertisement identifies a plurality of local routes associated with the first VPN, and includes a first indication that information relating to the plurality of local routes is not to be stored in the routing and forwarding table. The second advertisement identifies the local routes, an address of the first CE device, and the first CE device as a next hop.

Carrier's carrier without customer-edge-to-customer-edge border gateway protocol

A node in an overlay network requests a ranked list of other nodes in the overlay network that can provide a desired piece of content or service to the requesting node. A separate node such as a router generates the ranked list using a routing algorithm, returning the list to the requesting node so that the requesting node may acquire the desired content or service from the nearest node in the overlay network.

Routing-based proximity for communication networks to routing-based proximity for overlay networks

A technique is provided for one or more network nodes to deterministically select data flows to preempt. In particular, each node employs a set of predefined rules which instructs the node as to which existing data flow should be preempted in order to admit a new high-priority data flow. The rules are precisely defined and are common to all nodes configured in accordance with the present invention. Illustratively, a network node not only selects a data flow to preempt, but additionally may identify other 'fate sharing' data flows that may be preempted. As used herein, a group of data flows has a fate-sharing relationship if the application instance(s) containing the data flows functions adequately only when all the fate-shared flows are operational. In a first illustrative embodiment, after a data flow in a fate-sharing group is preempted, network nodes may safely tear down the group's remaining data flows. In a second illustrative embodiment, when a data flow is preempted, all its fate-shared data flows are marked as being 'at risk.' Because the at-risk flows are not immediately torn down, it is less likely that resources allocated for the at-risk flows may be freed then subsequently used to establish relatively lower-priority data flows instead of relatively higher-priority data flows.

Mechanism to improve preemption behavior of resource reservations

In one embodiment, an intermediate network device includes a communication facility configured to receive a reservation request message that includes a flow spec object. The flow spec object specifies one or more flow parameters that describe a given traffic flow that desires to pass through the intermediate network device. A flow is configured to compare the one or more flow parameters specified in the flow spec object to one or more constants stored in a memory, to determine a type of traffic of the given traffic flow. The flow analyzer determines the type of traffic independent of any differentiated services codepoint (DSCP) values in packets of the given traffic flow. A traffic scheduler is configured to assign the given traffic flow to a particular per hop behavior (PHB) based on the determined type of traffic for the given traffic flow.

System and method for recognizing and assigning application-specific flows

A layer-2 virtual-private-network (L2-VPN) service with automatic discovery and connection establishment is provided within a wide-area, multiple-autonomous-system (AS) network according to one of two approaches. In the first approach, inter-AS tunnels are used to connect pairs of provider edge (PE) routers of different ASes, and the PE routers then establish signaling connections to each other which are used to create pseudowires that implement the layer-2 connectivity. A second approach utilizes so-called 'pseudowire switching' in which separate pseudowires are created within each AS and between ASes, and then the separate pseudowires are stitched together to form end-to-end connections. The first approach has the benefit of transparent operation provided by the tunnel, while the second approach requires fewer inter-AS signaling connections.

Inter-autonomous-system virtual private network with autodiscovery and connection signaling

A method of forwarding data in a data communications network having a plurality of nodes comprises the steps, performed at a repairing node, of computing the repair path around a network component to a target node and forwarding data along the repair path. The computing step comprises the step of computing an intermediate node reachable by the repairing node and from which the target node can be reached. The forwarding step includes the step of constructing a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) packet for forwarding to the intermediate node.

Method and apparatus for forwarding data in a data communications network

An MPLS router operable for labeled switch path (LSP) operation defines a compression index for identifying a decompression context between other MPLS LSP routers. The compression index allows a multipoint-to-point link between MPLS routers, thereby avoiding an exhaustive mesh of point-to-point links between each of the MPLS routers. The originator ID identifies each of the multipoint originating endpoints at a common destination, and maintains the context of each compressed header to match incoming compressed headers to the corresponding header values. The originator ID, typically the IP address of the originator, operates as the compression index on the multipoint-to-point connection, operable to distinguish multiple originators of the multipoint-to-point connection and provide header compression for each.

System and methods for compressing message headers

In one embodiment, a technique is provided to share resources among data flows. An apparatus receives a request for a new data flow where the new data flow is associated with a session group (ID). The apparatus determines that the session group ID of the new data flow matches a session group ID of one or more existing data flows, and that the one or more existing data flows are not already sharing resources with another data flow that has a session group ID different from the first session group ID. Provided this is true, the apparatus shares resources reserved for the one or more existing data flows with the new data flow.

Resource sharing among multiple RSVP sessions

A system associates multiple discrete traffic flows within a computer network into a group, and allows the traffic flows corresponding to a given group to share a single set of resources. A sourcing entity preferably generates a locally unique resource identifier (ID) for use in requesting a reservation of network resources for a first traffic flow or session. Intermediate network devices within the computer network reserve a set of resources and associate the reservation with the specified resource ID. The sourcing entity may then re-use this same resource ID in a subsequent request to reserve resources for a second traffic flow or session. The intermediate network devices determine that a reservation made by the sourcing entity and associated with this resource ID already exists and, rather than reserve additional or further resources for the second traffic flow or session, share the previously reserved resources between the two traffic flows or sessions.

Growing community of inventors

Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Bruce Stuart Davie