Cisco Technology, Inc.

Eldad Bar Eli

Doron Oz

Nir Ben-Dvora

One or more firewalls are used to perform firewall functionality on packets based on the entry and exit accesses of each of the one or more firewalls being applied to a packet. For example, when firewalls are included in a router, the interfaces of the router are typically mapped to virtual firewalls and access thereof. Based on the determined routing of a particular packet, the firewalls to apply and their corresponding entry and exit accesses are identified. In order to decouple the application by the firewall itself of the security policies from the network topology and routing architecture (e.g., the network routing address information which is typically relied upon by current firewalls), the firewall functionality is defined based on the identified entry and exit accesses of a firewall, rather than based on network defined addresses, for example.

Packet firewalls of particular use in packet switching devices

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for sending a multicast packet from multiple network interfaces across multiple networks using the same media access source address (MAC source address). One implementation includes a processing element and a network interface for each of the multiple networks. The processing element generates and initiates sending of a multicast packet having a same media access source address (MAC source address) from at least two of the multiple network interfaces. In one implementation, a single copy of the multicast packet is buffered, and each of the network interfaces retrieves, such as via a direct memory access (DMA) request, the multicast packet and forwards it to an attached network.

Growing community of inventors

Ramat Hasharon, Israel

Eldad Bar Eli