Breakingpoint Systems, Inc.

Keysight Technologies, Inc.

Jonathan Glenn Stroud

Brent Cook

Michael Moriarty

Matthew Ryan Bergeron

Timothy M Zadigian

Peter Joseph Marsico

Christian Paul Sommers

Kristopher Len Raney

Stefan Jan Johansson

Shardendu Pandey

Mark Veteikis

Jonathan Lee Harrod

A method for selectively processing a packet flow using a flow inspection engine is disclosed. The method includes receiving, by at least one hardware data plane processor component in a network packet broker, a plurality of packets associated with a packet flow, and forwarding, by the at least one hardware data plane processor component to at least one flow inspection engine, a copy of at least a portion of one or more of the initial packets of the packet flow. The method further includes providing, by the at least one hardware data plane processor component to the at least one flow inspection engine, packet flow statistical data resulting from a high throughput processing of the plurality of packets by the at least one hardware data plane processor component and generating, by the at least one flow inspection engine, metadata records using the copy at least a portion of the of the one or more of the initial packets and the packet flow statistical data, wherein the at least one hardware data plane processor component generates the statistical data from the plurality of packets independent of any instruction from the at least one flow inspection engine.

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for selectively processing a packet flow using a flow inspection engine

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for smart network interface card testing are disclosed. One example method occurs at a network interface card (NIC) comprising a network processing unit executing a monitoring agent for monitoring data traversing the NIC. The method includes obtaining, from a test system or a test traffic generator, at least one test packet; generating, using the monitoring agent, NIC processing information associated with processing the at least one test packet, wherein generating the NIC processing information includes monitoring application layer events, presentation layer events, session layer events, transport layer events, network layer events, driver layer events, kernel layer events, or other events involving the NIC and generating the NIC processing information using the monitored events; and storing or providing the NIC processing information for data analysis.

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for smart network interface card testing

A method for network flow metadata processing at a network packet broker includes, receiving, as input at the network packet broker, network flow metadata, the network flow metadata including a network flow statistic generated by a network device regarding packets in the network flow. The method further includes accessing, by the network packet broker, a network flow metadata processing rules database and identifying a network flow metadata processing rule to apply to the network flow metadata. The method further includes processing, by the network packet broker, the network flow metadata using the network flow metadata processing rule. The method further includes forwarding, by the network packet broker and based on results of the processing, egress network flow metadata to a network tool.

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for processing network flow metadata at a network packet broker

A method for automatic configuration and control of a remote inline network monitoring probe includes receiving packets from a router or firewall associated with a network being monitored by the inline network monitoring probe. A source medium access control (MAC) and a source IP address are extracted from a first packet of the packets received from the router or firewall. The method further includes storing the source IP address and the source MAC address in memory of the inline network monitoring probe. The method further includes changing a MAC address of the inline network monitoring probe to the source MAC address. The method includes assigning the source IP address to the inline network monitoring probe. The method further includes using the source MAC address and the source IP address to communicate with a remote network monitoring control center.

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for automatic configuration and control of remote inline network monitoring probe

A method of processing network traffic within a computing system, comprises at a first configurable logic device (CLD), receiving an ingress network packet from an external network interface, associating the ingress network packet with a timestamp indicating the time of receipt, parsing the ingress network packet to locate a link-layer checksum value and a routing-layer checksum value, determining whether the link-layer and routing-layer checksum values are correct based on the ingress network packet contents, and transmitting the ingress network packet to a second CLD via a high-speed interconnection; and at the second CLD receiving the ingress network packet, parsing the ingress network packet to locate a source address and a destination address, determining a destination and a route for the ingress network packet based at least in part on the source and destination addresses, and transmitting the ingress network packet to the determined destination via the determined route.

High-speed CLD-based pipeline architecture

A system for programming one or more configurable logic devices (e.g., FPGA or CPLD) via universal serial bus (USB) may include one or more CLDs; a microcontroller coupled to the one or more CLDs via a parallel data bus; a processor coupled to the microcontroller via a USB interface, the processor having access to CLD access logic and one or more CLD images; and instructions executable by the processor to program at least one of the CLDs by loading the CLD access logic onto the microcontroller, using the CLD access logic loaded on the microcontroller to set each of the at least one CLD to a programming mode, and forwarding a particular CLD image from the processor to the microcontroller via the USB interface and from the microcontroller to each of the at least one CLD via the parallel data bus.

Systems and methods for programming configurable logic devices via USB

A method for booting devices in a multi-card computing system comprising a plurality of cards connected to a shared backplane may include: dynamically generating a Media Access Control (MAC) addresses for at least some of the devices in the computing system, the dynamically generated MAC address for each device including information regarding the location of that device within the multi-card computing system; a boot management system receiving a boot-related information request from a particular device in the multi-card system, the boot-related information request comprising a request for particular boot-related information for facilitating a boot process for the requesting device, and including the MAC address of the requesting device; and the boot management system determining whether to send a response to the requesting device with the requested boot-related information based at least on the information in the MAC address regarding the location of the requesting device within the multi-card computing system.

Systems and methods for booting devices using assigned servers in a multiple-card computing system

A method of routing internal network traffic within a computing system comprises receiving a network packet at a configurable logic device (CLD), parsing the network packet to obtain a destination address, searching a predetermined range of a routing table wherein each row of the routing table specifies a range of possible destination addresses and routing information, identifying a matching row of the routing table wherein the destination address falls within the range of possible destination addresses of the matching row, and routing the packet according to the routing information.

High-speed CLD-based internal packet routing

A method for managing the capture of packets in a computing system comprises maintaining a buffer tail pointer in a memory of an instruction executing device, receiving a series of packets at an instruction executing device, for each received packet prepending a header comprising a packet length and a packet pointer set to a current value of the buffer tail pointer, determining a next free memory location by adding the current value of the buffer tail pointer to the length of a previous packet identified by the buffer tail pointer, temporarily writing the packet and prepend header to the next free memory location in a circular packet buffer in a memory coupled to the instruction executing device, and setting the buffer tail pointer to the next free memory location.

Managing the capture of packets in a computing system

A method of sending programming and debug commands, comprises loading control instructions on a processor from an attached tangible, non-transitory computer-readable medium, copying the contents of a program image file by the processor from the computer-readable medium across a bus to a programmable device on the same card as the processor, signaling the programmable device to send an instruction to a configurable logic device (CLD) on the same card as the processor via a debug channel.

JTAG-based programming and debug

A method offloading data intensive tasks from a processor comprises receiving at a configurable logic device (CLD) a network packet, parsing the network packet to determine that the packet is a TCP segment, searching a partially assembled packet table to locate an associated partially assembled packet data structure, inserting the network packet into the associated partially assembled packet data structure, recognizing that the partially assembled packet data structure contains every segment produced from an original TCP packet, assembling a fully assembled TCP packet from the data in the partially assembled packet data structure, and transmitting the fully assembled TCP packet to a processor in the same computer system as the CLD.

High-speed CLD-based TCP assembly offload

A method of routing internal network traffic within a computing system, comprises receiving a network packet at a configurable logic device (CLD), parsing the network packet to obtain a source address and a destination address, searching a predetermined range of a routing table wherein each row of the routing table specifies a range of possible destination addresses and a thread group identifier, identifying a matching row of the routing table wherein the destination address falls within the range of possible destination addresses of the matching row, calculating a hash value based at least in part on the source and destination addresses, and determining a thread identifier based at least in part on the hash value and the thread group identifier.

Binding of network flows to process threads

A method of initializing programmable devices on a shared bus, comprises, on power up, loading control instructions on a processor from an attached tangible, non-transient computer-readable medium, automatically allowing a first programmable device on a common bus to exit its reset state and enter a read-to-program state as the computer system powers up, automatically holding a second programmable device on the common bus in its reset state, querying the common bus by the processor to identify the first programmable device, copying the contents of a program image file by the processor from the computer-readable medium across the common bus to the first programmable device, and once the first programmable device has been programmed with the contents of the program image file, signaling the first programmable device to release the reset hold on the second programmable device.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Jonathan Glenn Stroud