International Business Machines Corporation

Kenneth M Walk

Claude Basso

William Joseph Armstrong

Cyriel Johan Minkenberg

Mircea R Gusat

Chih-Jen Chang

Bruce Marshall Walk

Brian Thomas Vanderpool

Fredy Daniel Neeser

Philip Rogers Hillier, Iii

Todd Alan Greenfield

Jeffrey James Lynch

Mark L Rudquist

IEEE 802.1Q and Enhanced Transmission Selection provide only eight different traffic classes that may be used to control bandwidth in a particular physical connection (or link). Instead of relying only on these eight traffic classes to manage bandwidth, the embodiments discussed herein disclose using an Enhanced Transmission Selection scheduler that permits a network device to set the bandwidth for an individual virtual LAN. Allocating bandwidth in a port based on a virtual LAN ID permits a network device to allocate bandwidth to, e.g., millions of unique virtual LANs. Thus, this technique may increase the granular control of the network fabric and its performance.

Flexible and scalable enhanced transmission selection method for network fabrics

A network fabric may divide a physical connection into a plurality of VLANs as defined by IEEE 802.1Q. Moreover, many network fabrics use Priority Flow Control to identify and segregate network traffic based on different traffic classes or priorities. Current routing protocols define only eight traffic classes. In contrast, a network fabric may contain thousands of unique VLANs. When network congestion occurs, network devices (e.g., switches, bridges, routers, servers, etc.) can negotiate to pause the network traffic associated with one of the different traffic classes. Pausing the data packets associated with a single traffic class may also stop the data packets associated with thousands of VLANs. The embodiments disclosed herein permit a network fabric to individually pause VLANs rather than entire traffic classes.

Flexible and scalable data link layer flow control for network fabrics

The distributed switch may include a plurality of chips (i.e., sub-switches) on a switch module. These sub-switches may receive from a computing device connected to a Tx/Rx port a multicast data frame (e.g., an Ethernet frame) that designates a plurality of different destinations. Instead of simply using one egress connection interface to forward the copies of the data frame to each of the destinations sequentially, the sub-switch may use a plurality of a connection interfaces to transfer copies of the multicast data frame simultaneously. The port that receives the multicast data frame can borrow the connection interfaces (and associated hardware such as buffers) assigned to these other ports to transmit copies of the multicast data frame simultaneously.

Multicast bandwidth multiplication for a unified distributed switch

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Kenneth M Walk