Cisco Technology, Inc.

Cumulus Networks Inc.

James P Rivers

Scott A Emery

Stewart Findlater

Brian Arnold Petersen

David H Yen

Pauline Shuen

Gregory Lee DeJager

Navindra Yadav

Gnanaprakasam Pandian

Surendra Anubolu

David R Oran

Silvano Gai

Ralph Droms

Claudio DeSanti

Harish Ramamurthy Devanagondi

Mark Stapp

John M Schnizlein

Sean Convery

Sandeep Arvind Patel

David Hsi-Chen Yen

Thomas James Edsall

Frederick Roland Schindler

Peter Clarke Newman

Balaji Satyanarayana Prabhakar

William Frank Edwards

Linda T Cheng

Bernard N Daines

Chaitanya Kodeboyina

Gordon Mackay

Wilson Kok

Andrew Richard Harding

Murali Duvvury

Bradley D Erickson

David Talaski

Alan Yee

Ravi Kumar Gadde

Edward Nolan Leake

Eric Wiles

Shrijeet Subhabrata Mukherjee

John K Chen

Jeffrey D Provost

Michael Lawrence Regal

John Oberstar

Rajesh Ekras Bawankule

Rita Ousterhout

Sean X Wang

Michael Regal

To accommodate graceful offloading of connections from a port of a network element, thereby allowing the port to be decommissioned, both existing and new connections allocated to that port according to a load balancing protocol are replicated on a backup port. Thereafter, or concurrently therewith, the port is configured to drop acknowledgements of the new connections, and the port is monitored so as to eventually identify an absence of connections thereon. At that time, the port may be decommissioned inasmuch as all new connections will have been established on the backup port and no previously existing connections on the original port will remain.

Flow based session drain director

In one embodiment, a subnet-scoped multicast packet is received on an interface of a forwarding device that is connected to a host device of a subnet of a forwarding domain. The received subnet-scoped multicast packet is transmitted from one or more other interfaces of the forwarding device that are connected to one or more other host devices of the subnet. The received subnet-scoped multicast packet is also encapsulated with an additional header. The encapsulated subnet-scoped multicast packet is forwarded from the forwarding device to an intermediate router which routes the encapsulated subnet-scoped multicast packet to one or more other forwarding devices configured to decapsulate the encapsulated subnet-scoped multicast packet and transmit the decapsulated subnet-scoped multicast packet to one or more connected host devices of an additional portion of the subnet.

Subnet scoped multicast/broadcast packet distribution over a routed network

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for applying network policy to communications originating at operating system virtual interfaces. In an example embodiment, a network device is networked with a switch. The network device may include a first operating system interface, a virtualization adapter, and an input output port. In an example embodiment, the virtualization adapter receives a first frame from the first operating system interface. The virtualization adapter may tag the first frame to indicate an association between the first frame and the first operating system interface. The first frame may then be transmitted with a second frame being associated with a second operating system interface, to the switch via the input output port. In an example embodiment, the switch is configured to receive the frame, examine a tag and then to enforce a network policy upon the first frame, based on the tag.

Apparatus and method for applying network policy at virtual interfaces

This document discusses, among other things, applying network policy at a network device. In an example embodiment fiber channel hard zoning information may be received that indicates whether a fiber channel frame is permitted to be communicated between two fiber channel ports. Some example embodiments include identifying a media access control addresses associated with the fiber channel ports. An example embodiment may include generating one or more access control entries based on the fiber channel identifications of the fiber channel ports and the zoning information. The access control entries may be distributes to an Ethernet port to be inserted into an existing access control list and used to enforce a zoning policy upon fiber channel over Ethernet frames.

Apparatus and method for applying network policy at a network device

Methods and systems for synchronizing network configuration state tables between an operating system kernel and an attached ASIC switch device are disclosed. An instruction to update a target network configuration state table in either an operating system kernel or an attached ASIC switch device is received. Data from the target network configuration state table and data from a corresponding network configuration state table are retrieved. Values of data in the two tables are compared and an instruction is sent to update the target network configuration state table with one or more values from the corresponding network configuration state table.

Systems and methods for accelerating networking functionality

In one embodiment, an apparatus may include a first interface configured to be communicatively coupled, via a network, to a second interface and a fiber channel services module. The first interface may be configured to receive a fiber channel service from the fiber channel services module, establish communication with the second interface, and communicate a fiber-channel-over-Ethernet (FCoE) frame to the second interface, via a forwarder that forwards the FCoE frame without employing a fiber channel switching element. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Providing fibre channel services and forwarding fibre channel over ethernet frames

Subnet scoped multicast/broadcast packet distribution mechanism over a routed network

A method and system to manage network traffic congestion in networks with link layer flow control is provided. The system comprises a physical queue monitor configured to monitor a state of a physical queue at a network device, a link layer flow control activator configured to activate link layer flow control based on the state of the physical queue, a proxy queue control module, a proxy queue monitor to monitor the state of the proxy queue, and a transport layer flow control activator. The proxy queue control module may be configured to update a state of a proxy queue based on the state of the physical queue. The proxy queue monitor may be configured to monitor the state of the proxy queue. The transport layer flow control activator may be configured to activate transport layer flow control based on the state of the proxy queue.

Method and system to manage network traffic congestion in networks with link layer flow control

This document discusses, among other things, applying network policy at a network device. In an example embodiment fiber channel hard zoning information may be received that indicates whether a fiber channel frame is permitted to be communicated between two fiber channel ports. Some example embodiments include identifying a media access control address associated with the fiber channel ports. An example embodiment may include generating one or more access control entries based on the fiber channel identifications of the fiber channel ports and the zoning information. The access control entries may be distributed to an Ethernet port to be inserted into an existing access control list and used to enforce a zoning policy upon fiber channel over Ethernet frames.

In one embodiment, receiving a data packet in a data forwarding domain, encapsulating a header to the received data packet, and routing the encapsulated data packet in the data forwarding domain over a distribution tree are provided.

Subnet scoped multicast / broadcast packet distribution mechanism over a routed network

Generating a binding between a source address and one or more roles of a user accessing the network and distributing the binding to a filter node. The source address is currently assigned to the device. The binding may be generated by one or more nodes on an ingress path used during authentication of the user. The binding may be distributed to the filter node on demand or without any request from the filter node. Responsive to a determination that the user is associated with a new source address, a new binding is generated to associate a new source address with the one or more roles for the user. The new binding is distributed to the filter node. Another aspect is a method of enforcing a role based security policy at a filter node, using bindings of source addresses to roles.

Role aware network security enforcement

Devices and methods are provided for enabling high-speed data communication at relatively low cost. Some methods allow devices to communicate by selecting a data transfer rate from among multiple data transfer rates. Some such methods allow devices to communicate according to the highest data transfer rate among multiple data transfer rates at which communications can be made without exceeding a predetermined error rate. Communications may be enabled between a first device operating at a relatively higher data transfer rate and a second device operating at a relatively lower data transfer rate. Pause frames or the like may be used to rate limit data received from the first device and maintain an average data transfer rate for communications with the second device at the lower data transfer rate.

Adapter and method to support long distances on existing fiber

In one embodiment, detecting data traffic from a host device in a data forwarding domain, injecting a host route associated with the detected data traffic, and updating a forwarding table associated with the host route are provided.

Network routing to the socket

Techniques for generating cyclic redundancy check (CRC) values are provided. Bit messages that are to be transmitted to recipients are aligned to desired byte boundaries for purposes of generating CRC values, which are to be sent with the bit messages. The CRC values are rewound or adjusted back to values associated with original lengths of the bit messages before the CRC values are transmitted or forwarded with the bit messages to recipients.

Techniques for generating cyclic redundancy check (CRC) values

Growing community of inventors

Saratoga, CA, United States of America

James P Rivers