Foundry Networks, Inc.

Iphotonix

Other

Netsocket, Inc.

Chiaro Networks Ltd

Nectar Services Corp.

Brocade Communication Systems LLC

Nectar Holdings, Inc.

Jeremy Benjamin As Receiver for Chiaro Networks Ltd.

Jeremy Benjamin, Trustee

Lance Arnold Visser

Thomas L Watson

Ronald Paul Folkes

David Gillam

Qi Ning

Russell Wiant

Jim Kleiner

Qiang Li

Steve M Simmons

Bing Liu

Richard B Platt

Son Thanh Tran

Andrew Kennedy Fullford

Eric Weeren

Louis Gregory Fausak

Xiaomei Lu

David D Baukus

A system and method for performing topology discovery in a data network is provided. Network elements utilizing a distance-vector protocol, such as EIGRP, advertises routes and metric information. A resource control point or other element analyzes the advertised routes and metrics and determines the nexthop, thereby providing a topology map of the network.

Route topology discovery in data networks

Local internet functionality may allow host devices positioned in branch office locations to securely communicate outgoing internet traffic directly over the internet. Local internet functionality may also allow said host devices to securely receive incoming internet traffic through the creation and tracking of local internet sessions. Local internet functionality is achieved by forwarding egress internet traffic over a local internet virtual pathway extending to a WAN interface/port of a local host device. The WAN interface/port is configured to communicate traffic received over the local internet virtual pathway directly over the internet, while communicating all other egress traffic over secure tunnels of the virtual edge router. The WAN interface/port is further configured to monitor outgoing local internet traffic to create and track local internet sessions.

Local internet with quality of service (QoS) egress queuing

A virtual edge router network for providing managed services to distributed remote office locations can include routing components that are capable of being autonomously deployed at the network edge, as well as remotely managed, thereby obviating the need for on-site technical support in remote offices of the a small and medium business (SMB) client. Autonomous deployment and remote management is achieved through abstraction of the control and management planes from the data plane. Virtual edge routers may include virtual forwarding units and virtual remote agents instantiated on host devices in each remote office location, as well as a virtual network controller instantiated on a host device in a head-office location. A data plane of the virtual edge router communicatively couples the virtual forwarding units to one another, while a control plane communicatively couples the virtual network controller to each virtual data forwarding unit.

Edge network virtualization

Incoming packets communicated over a common WAN interface of a distributed host device may be processed differently depending on their traffic classification. A virtual forwarding unit classifies incoming packets as tunneled traffic, tunnel-related control traffic, remote agent traffic, or local internet traffic. Tunneled traffic classifies packets transported over data or control tunnels extending between WAN interfaces of distributed host devices. Tunnel-related control traffic classifies packets communicated to measure a quality parameter of the data or control tunnels, such as operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) packets. Remote agent traffic classifies packets associated with existing remote agent sessions, which are created and tracked based on outgoing management traffic originating from the virtual remote agent. Local internet traffic classifies packets associated with existing local internet sessions, which are created and tracked based on outgoing local internet traffic.

Wireless area network (WAN) overloading

Dual-homed forwarding techniques ensure that packets destined for a private network location are forwarded directly to the private network. Host devices adapted for dual-homed forwarding techniques may first search a forwarding table to identify an outgoing interface associated with a packet's destination address, and then search an egress table to identify an entry associated with the outgoing interface. The identified entry in the egress table indicates whether the outgoing interface is a remote interface, and if so, a dual-homing identifier associated with the outgoing interface. If so, the host device searches the forwarding table a second time to determine whether any local interfaces are associated with the dual-homing identifier. The packet is then forwarded either over the local outgoing interface associated with the dual-homing identifier or the originally identified outgoing interface.

Dual-homed external network access in a distributed internet protocol (IP) router

The real-time aspects of keep-alive generation are removed from the dynamic routing protocol (DRP) application and are embedded within a Unix-based operating system, which is programmed by DRP. A keep-alive control provides the ability to create a keep-alive message and a timeout interval on a TCP socket. Each socket can have an independent keep-alive message and timeout interval. A keep-alive message is sent whenever the TCP socket sends no normal user output for a duration exceeding the timeout interval. A timeout interval is normally specific in seconds and a keep-alive message is user definable and must not exceed a predetermined length in bytes. System calls are used to set the timeout interval and keep-alive message independently. Both a timeout and a keep-alive message must be set before the timeout becomes active.

System and method for router keep-alive control

A system and method for providing service assurance in a data network is provided. Resource control points are positioned throughout a data network, such as an IP data network. The resource control points obtain network topology information and correlates that information with information associated with a particular service session. The resource control points utilize the correlated information to generate quality service records and to provide status information regarding the network topology and particular sessions. The resource control points may further retrieve link and utilization information to control sessions during periods of congestion.

System and method for service assurance in IP networks

High availability BGP4 is based on redundant hardware as well as redundant software that replicates the RUN state of BGP4. There are two copies, respectively active and backup, of BGP4 running on two separate redundant hardware platforms. All BGP4 internal implementations apply various methods to replicate the running state of BGP4 independently of peer network routers. When this hardware or software fails on one redundant hardware platform, peer routers are unaware of the failure. Internally, based on duplicative states, the local router recovers from the failure and keeps the protocol running. During the recovery period, the local router can bring up a backup again. In the HA architecture, these activities are not detected by peer routers, such that there is no instability to the Internet backbone caused by BGP4 failure.

High available method for border gateway protocol version 4

Employing an asymmetric protocol, multiple sources reliably broadcast dynamically changing routing tables incrementally across multiple consumers from a single distributor. Each of multiple sources send current tables to the distributor using a snapshot mechanism. Message are buffered, segmented, paced by timers, and broadcast to the consumers repetitively at the distributor. Negative acknowledgments from the consumer request missing messages from the distributor after receipt of a keepalive message from the distributor. The distributor marks the missing messages and retransmits replacements from a history buffer only after firing of a resend timer. A unique Session ID included in all messages originating from each particular source facilitates reliable table distribution from multiple sources to multiple consumers via a single distributor.

System and method for router data distribution

A system and method for providing service assurance in a data network is provided. Resource control points are positioned throughout a data network, such as an IP data network. The resource control points obtain network topology information and correlates that information with information associated with a particular service session. The resource control points utilize the correlated information to generate quality service records and to provide status information regarding the network topology and particular sessions. The information collected by the resource control points may also be utilized to provide reports regarding resource management for services within the data network, the path used by the session across the data network, fault information for the session in the context of the network topology and congestion information as concerns the resources in the data network used by the session.

A host router is logically partitioned into virtual router domains that manage independent processes and routing application copies but share a common operating system. Each v-net manages an independent set of sockets and host router interfaces, each associated with only one v-net at one time, but interchangeably repartitionable. Traffic is removed from an interface during repartitioning. Duplicate arrays of global variables copied to each v-net are accessed by macro references. A v-net facility can separate route tables used internally from the externally visible route tables and can avoid conflicts between internal and external IP addresses that share the same identifier. For example a common FreeBSD operating system supports a dynamic routing protocol (DRP) application. Each v-net runs an independent copy of the DRP software and is logically independent. A failure in one DRP copy does not adversely affect other copies.

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Dallas, TX, United States of America

Lance Arnold Visser