Ericsson Gmbh

Marconi Intellectual Property (ringfence), Inc.

Ericsson Ab

Chase T Tingley

Robert J Walsh

Stephen M Alfieri

A system for supporting translation of virtual IP addresses to Ethernet/MAC addresses in a multi-Virtual Network environment, in which address resolution tables are generated and maintained by Virtual Networking Devices. Virtual Networking Device (VND) sends and/or receives Virtual Network-specific ARP traffic. The Virtual Network-specific ARP traffic includes ARP requests or responses that map a MAC address to an IP address in the private IP address space of an associated Virtual Private Network. The disclosed Virtual Networking Devices can therefore operate in configurations in which multiple independent entities operate on separate Virtual Networks, and where servers may be accessible via virtual IP addresses within the private IP address spaces of associated Virtual Networks.

Extension of address resolution protocol (ARP) for internet protocol (IP) virtual networks

A dense virtual router packet switching system includes a memory divided into context areas for a set of virtual private routed networks (VPRNs). Each context area includes a routing table and routing protocol state information for a corresponding VPRN. Each of a set of different routing tasks operates with a separate routing table and separate routing protocol state information to realize a corresponding virtual router. Context selection logic selectively couples the routing tasks to the different context areas of the memory to realize a set of virtual routers for all the VPRNs. The system supports a large number of routes by exploiting the segmentation of the VPRNs. Rather than having a single large routing table and associated routing process, which can load hardware resources in proportion to the square of the number of routes in the routing table, routes are distributed among a number of VPRNs having generally smaller tables and correspondingly less processing demand.

Growing community of inventors

Somerville, MA, United States of America

Chase T Tingley