Alcatel Lucent

Rockstar Consortium US LP

Rpx Clearinghouse LLC

Nortel Networks Corporation

Rockstar Bidco, LP

Florin S Balus

Dinesh Mohan

Simon P Parry

Robert Friskney

Wim Henderickx

Paul Kwok

John J Osswald

Michael K Poon

Kendall Harvey

Joe Regan

Jeffrey Sugimoto

Michael Loomis

Andrew Dolganow

Dimitrios Stiliadis

Nehal Bhau

Suresh Boddapati

Neil Hart

Kajal Saha

Senthil K Sathappan

Vinod Prabhu

Xiang-Ling Tan

David Weyand

Georges Chung Kam Chung

John Lynn

Sunil S Khandekar

Jeroen Dhollander

The invention includes a method and apparatus for distributing flooding labels within a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) infrastructure supporting Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Media Access Control (MAC) Virtual Private Networking (VPN).

Method and apparatus for MPLS label allocation for a BGP MAC-VPN

A customer Quality-of-Service (QoS) transport capability is depicted and described herein. The customer QoS transport capability enables transparent transport of customer QoS information via a Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) network. The customer QoS transport capability enables customer QoS information that would normally be terminated at a point of ingress to a PBB network to be transported via the PBB network transparently and recovered at a point of egress from the PBB network.

Method and apparatus for providing transport of customer QoS information via PBB networks

Systems, methods, architectures and/or apparatus for providing a distributed Virtual Routing and Switching (dVRS) solution at a data center (DC) by logically representing the networking resources of the data center as a plurality virtual nodes, each virtual node comprising an IP infrastructure based on a physical network node and a plurality of virtual switches, each virtual switch including a VRS instance linked to one or more VRS instances at other virtual switches via a VLAN to provide thereby a virtual service, wherein the physical network node performs control plane processing and provides to each virtual switch the specific routing information associated with the local services of that virtual switch. Thus, from a data plane perspective the virtual switches route and/or switch traffic directly to tunnels pointing to remote VRS instances without involving the Controller in the forwarding of the packets.

System and method providing distributed virtual routing and switching (DVRS)

Various exemplary embodiments relate to an operational group in a network element of a communication network, where the operational group is associated with monitored objects and monitoring client objects such that the status of the operational group is a function of the operational status of the monitored objects or services. Monitoring client objects can monitor the status of the operational group such that the status of each of the monitoring client objects reflects the status of the operational group.

Method and apparatus for object grouping and state modeling for application instances

Described are methods and communications network for carrying pseudowires over packet-switched network. A communication network includes a packet-switched network (PSN), a first provider edge (PE) device in communication with a second PE device through the PSN, and a pseudowire (PW) established between the PE devices for emulating a service across the PSN. The PW has a Virtual Circuit Connection Verification (VCCV) control channel that carries an Ethernet Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) message. In some embodiments, various data plane encapsulation formats enable a PW to emulate an Ethernet or a non-Ethernet service over an Ethernet PSN. Each encapsulation format includes an Ethernet tunnel header and a PW header that encapsulates an Ethernet or non-Ethernet payload.

Multi-protocol support over ethernet packet-switched networks

A Multiple Registration Protocol (MRP) advertisement control capability is provided. A method includes receiving an MRP advertisement at a device configured as an interface between a core domain and a local domain and determining handling of the MRP advertisement at the device using at least one MRP policy stored on the device. The core domain may be a Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) network or other suitable core network. The local domain may be one of a PBB network, a Provider Bridging Network (PBN), a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), and the like. In one case, when the MRP advertisement is associated with a local service of the local domain, the MRP policy indicates that the MRP advertisement is not to be forwarded via the core domain. In one case, when the MRP advertisement is associated with an inter-domain service supported by the local domain, the MRP policy indicates that the MRP advertisement is to be forwarded to the core domain when received from the local domain and is to be forwarded to the local domain when received from the core domain.

Method and apparatus for controlling multiple registration protocol (MRP) scope using MRP policies

A node comprises a first communications interface to a customer network element, where the first communications interface is part of a group of communications interfaces to the customer network element to provide failover support. The node further includes a network interface to communicate over a trunk group to other nodes, where the trunk group includes a primary trunk and a secondary trunk. Just one of the primary and secondary trunks is active for communicating data units.

Communicating data units in a communications network that provides failure protection

Multi-protocol support over Ethernet packet-switched networks

The present invention provides a technique for automatically establishing a virtual circuit from one edge device to another through a core network. The virtual circuit may comprise one or more pseudowire segments. These pseudowire segments extend between adjacent edge and core devices within the core network. Pseudowire segments through the core network are automatically stitched together as a setup message is forwarded from a first edge device to a second edge device through the core network. A virtual circuit is established in one direction, and packets are forwarded in an opposite direction. With the present invention, a virtual circuit comprising any number of pseudowire segments, as well as two attachment circuits, may be established in an automatic and efficient manner upon being initiated by the first edge device.

Dynamic establishment of virtual circuits multisegment pseudowires

A technique for operating a network involves controlling the black-holing of traffic by selectively redirecting unicast traffic destined for a dual-homed customer equipment (CE) device from a first provider backbone bridge (PBB) provider edge (PE) device to a second PBB PE device in response to a service failure. Unicast traffic is selectively redirected from the first PBB PE device to the second PBB PE device for a time interval that is long enough to enable the customer source MAC address (CMAC)-to-backbone MAC address (BMAC) association of the second PBB PE device to be learned by other PBB PE devices.

Failure protection in a provider backbone bridge network using selective redirection

An Ethernet protection and loadsharing capability is provided. The Ethernet protection and loadsharing capability enables co-existence of both protection and loadsharing for an Ethernet tunnel, having a plurality of associated Ethernet paths, between first and second Ethernet switches. The first Ethernet switch receives configuration information associated with the Ethernet tunnel between the first and second Ethernet switches, and processes the configuration information for causing the first Ethernet switch to associate the Ethernet paths of the Ethernet tunnel with an Ethernet tunnel endpoint object associated with an Ethernet tunnel. The first Ethernet switch, upon receiving traffic intended for the second Ethernet switch, propagates the traffic from the first Ethernet switch toward the second Ethernet switch via at least a subset of the Ethernet paths of the Ethernet tunnel using protection and/or loadsharing.

Method and apparatus for using G.8031 extensions to enable coexistence of G.8031-based protection and LAG-like loadsharing for ethernet paths

A generalized multi-homing capability is depicted and described herein. The generalized multi-homing capability supports use of a generalized multi-homed site object and associated generalized multi-homed site identifier for Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS). For example, a generalized multi-homed site object may be generated using a multi-homed site object by associating an Ethernet endpoint object and a pseudowire endpoint object with the multi-homed site object. For example, a generalized multi-homed site object may be generated using a multi-homed site object by associating an Ethernet endpoint object with the multi-homed site object and associating one or more Ethernet-related objects with the Ethernet endpoint object. The generalized multi-homed site object is configured to support multiple types of endpoints, thereby enabling multi-homing to be supported for various types of devices in various types of networks (e.g., between devices of customer and service provider networks, between devices within a service provider network, between devices of different service provider networks, and the like) and for various types of services.

Growing community of inventors

Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Florin S Balus