Cisco Technology, Inc.

Cisco Systems Inc.

Joel Craig Naumann

Amar S Gupta

Shirish K Sathe

Denis Claveloux

Niels-Peder Mosegaard Jensen

Pui Li

Harsh Singh

Mohammad Seyed Nikuie

Nancy Shen

Eduard Allen Price

Shrish K Sathe

Shirish Sathe

In one embodiment, a flow control module aggregates indications of queuing resource utilization at devices attached to a switching fabric within a router and broadcasts that information out of band to all devices attached to the same switching fabric. When the flow control module identifies congestion at one of the attached devices according to the indications, the module may also cause a throttling of traffic sent to the congested device in addition to sending the out of band indication of the congestion to all the attached devices. Flow control modules for each of the attached devices provide local interrupts for reducing outbound traffic to a congested device according to the identification of that remote congestion.

Out of band flow control

A method and apparatus for the detection and communication of a missing LAN or WAN compliant device is disclosed. The method and apparatus provide a front card configured to accept a Fast Ethernet device on a PCI-compliant bus, and the front card includes a switch which is serially disposed on a PCI_Idsel line corresponding to a particular channel of the front card. The switch is further configured to receive a sensing signal corresponding to the channel from the device. The apparatus is configured to provide the PCI_Idsel line to the front card if the sensing signal is in a first state, and to provide a low potential to the front card if the sensing signal is in a second state.

Method and apparatus for communication of missing logic in a PCI based system by enabling or disabling PCI config cycles

A system for selectively forming high-speed serial connections between various components of a network device that includes a multiplexing switch coupled a GE slot and to the high speed serial interfaces of a PHY and at least two network devices. The switch can be programmed to connect the serial interfaces of the two network modules to provide a high-speed, low-latency serial link between the two network modules. Alternatively, the serial interface of a network module can be connected to the GE slot to provide a high-speed, low-latency serial link between the network module and the GE slot.

Configurable high-speed serial links between components of a network device

A system and method for switching data using a high-speed packet switch are described. Multiple communications are received along at least one input communication line. Each communication is framed into one or more packets, each packet containing destination information related to a destination module for a predetermined amount of data contained within each packet. Each packet is then transmitted to the destination module based on the destination information. Each packet is further retrieved from one storage module of multiple storage modules contained within the destination module at a rate dictated by a destination address field contained within the destination information and multiplexed to obtain a communication to be transmitted along an output communication line.

System and method for time division multiplexed switching of data using a high-speed packet switch

A method and apparatus is described that provides queuing traffic to many destinations covering a wide range of communication interface speeds while minimizing buffer size. A plurality of communication interface boards that distribute packets are coupled to a processing module that segments information into packets. Each communication interface board has an individual packet transmission speed. A buffer is provided in the communication interface boards according to the transmission speed of the board.

Method of queuing traffic to many destinations covering a wide range of transmission speeds while minimizing buffer size

An apparatus comprising a parallel arrangement of circuits is described. Each circuit has a data net input. Each circuit has an indication signal net input configured to transport an indication signal having shapes and/or temporal locations different than a data signal on the data net input.

Apparatus and method interface improvement for digital circuits

A communication controller is disclosed with a plurality of service modules including a redundant service module and with a mechanism for substituting the redundant service module for any one of the service modules. The communication controller includes a redundancy module that distributes communication signals to the redundant service module via a distribution bus coupled to the service modules. The distribution bus is alternatively used to distribute a high speed communication link to the service modules for improved physical connectivity.

One for N redundancy in a communication system

A communication interface with an expandable multilane cell bus that enables conversion of communication traffic received over a set of low speed or narrow band communication links according to a first communication protocol into a series of communication cells according to a second communication protocol. The cell bus enables concentration of the communication cells for transfer over a high speed communication link according to the second protocol. The communication interface includes a cell bus master that polls slave service modules while transferring communication cells to the service modules over a unidirection transmit portion of the cell bus and while receiving communication cells over a unidirection receive portion of the cell bus.

Growing community of inventors

Morgan Hill, CA, United States of America

Joel Craig Naumann