International Business Machines Corporation

Lenovo (singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Jun C Yin

Josep Cors

Ward Ray Nelson

David Alan Christenson

Wei Hu

Brad W Pokorny

Sherilyn M Becker

Methods, computer program products, and systems to assist in distribution of packets between a plurality of switch elements in a distributed switch, by monitoring an attribute of each of the plurality of switch elements including a first switch element and a first surrogate switch element, the first surrogate switch element in a first level of a hierarchy and configured using a default hierarchy configuration, the default hierarchy configuration forwarding a data frame to at least one of: a destination switch element of the data frame, and a second surrogate switch element, the second surrogate switch element in a second hierarchy level; computing a score, based on the monitored attribute, for each of the switch elements; and upon determining the score of the first switch element is greater than the score of the first surrogate switch element, designating the first switch element as the first surrogate switch element.

System guided surrogating control in broadcast and multicast

A firmware model is provided for a shared port membership table that is partitioned for different needs of a distributed network switch, such as broadcast groups, multicast groups, ACL rules, and other port membership groupings. The shared port membership table enables a control point to set the size of each of the types of port membership information based on their usage or expected usage. By shrinking one partition, the control point is able to use the port group entries for a different partition of port group information.

Port membership table partitioning

Method to assist in distribution of packets between a plurality of switch elements in a distributed switch, by monitoring an attribute of each of the plurality of switch elements including a first switch element and a first surrogate switch element, the first surrogate switch element in a first level of a hierarchy and configured using a default hierarchy configuration. The default hierarchy configuration forwards a data frame to at least one of: a destination switch element of the data frame, and a second surrogate switch element. The second surrogate switch element is in a second hierarchy level. A score is computed based on the monitored attribute for each of the switch elements. Upon determining the score of the first switch element is greater than the score of the first surrogate switch element, the first switch element is designated as the first surrogate switch element.

Method, computer program product, and system to assist in distribution of packets between a plurality of switch elements in a distributed switch, by monitoring an attribute of each of the plurality of switch elements including a first switch element and a first surrogate switch element, the first surrogate switch element in a first level of a hierarchy and configured using a default hierarchy configuration, the default hierarchy configuration forwarding a data frame to at least one of: a destination switch element of the data frame, and a second surrogate switch element, the second surrogate switch element in a second hierarchy level; computing a score, based on the monitored attribute, for each of the switch elements; and upon determining the score of the first switch element is greater than the score of the first surrogate switch element, designating the first switch element as the first surrogate switch element.

The present disclosure is directed to a method for automatically adapting the problem shooting steps to the user's skill level.

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Jun C Yin