Nortel Networks Corporation

Ciena Corporation

Avaya Inc.

Avaya Holdings Limited

Leigh C McLellan

Gautam Khera

Robert L Lee

Bakul Khanna

Dale Nash

Geping Chen

William F Rubino

A system, device, and method for supporting cut-through pats in an optical communication system involves obtaining hop count and quality of service information by an initiating device and using the hop count and quality of service information by the initiating device to make decisions relating to a cut-through path. The hop count and quality of service information is provided in a reply message that is sent by a terminating device and modified by intermediate devices between the initiating device and the terminating device. The terminating device sends the reply with a hop count equal to one and quality of service information for a first link (hop) toward the initiating device. Each intermediate device increments the hop count in the reply and adds quality of service information for a next link (hop) into the reply.

System, device, and method for supporting cut-through paths in an optical communication system

A Point to Point Protocol ('PPP') link running PPP Multilink Protocol with multi-class extensions ('Multilink-Extension') having both peers on the PPP link support a number of egress priority queues negotiated during the Multilink-Extension negotiation. Each peer also establishes a number of classes equal to the negotiated number of egress priority queues. Thus, communication devices that have a different default number, or different maximum number, of egress priority queues can interoperate in a manner that ensures packets have the same per-hop behavior (&#x201c;PHB&#x201d;). The present invention is both memory efficient and processing time efficient because only the minimum number of egress priority queues necessary are instantiated.

Dynamic queue instantiation

Efficient interface scheduling that maintains fairness among the scheduled interfaces and remains efficient even when scheduling large numbers of interfaces and even when implemented in software. Systems for scheduling interfaces through a physical port are provided that utilize a bit-mask. Each bit-mask has a bit-mask-level-having a plurality of bits, each bit in the bit-mask-level-represents a unit of bandwidth with the total number of bits in the bit-mask-level-representing the port's line speed, each bit in a bit-mask-level-is associated with an interface, and the number of bits associated with each interface determines the bandwidth for that interface. Methods of scheduling interfaces are provided that utilize one or more bit-masks to determine an order in which interfaces are scheduled. The present invention can efficiently implement versions of the dual-token-bucket algorithm.

Interface scheduling and traffic-shaping

System, device and method for supporting cut-through paths in an optical communication system

A system, device, and method for supporting cut-through paths in an optical communication system involves obtaining hop count and quality of service information by an initiating device and using the hop count and quality of service information by the initiating device to make decisions relating to a cut-through path. The hop count and quality of service information is provided in a reply message that is sent by a terminating device and modified by intermediate devices between the initiating device and the terminating device. The terminating device sends the reply with a hop count equal to one and quality of service information for a first link (hop) toward the initiating device. Each intermediate device increments the hop count in the reply and adds quality of service information for a next link (hop) into the reply.

A technique for updating a routing table in a routing device operating over a logical connection in a communication network utilizes a mechanism at a first protocol layer to determine a logical connection status and trigger a routing table update at a second protocol layer based upon the logical connection status. Specifically, the first protocol layer logic monitors the status of the logical channels, and, based on the status of the logical channels, determines the status of the logical connections. When the first protocol layer logic detects a logical channel failure that results in a logical connection failure, the first protocol layer logic triggers a routing table update by sending a signal to the second protocol layer logic indicating that the logical connection failed. Likewise, when the first protocol layer logic determines that communication over the failed logical connection is restored, the first protocol layer logic triggers a routing table update by sending a signal to the second protocol layer logic indicating that the logical connection is restored.

Growing community of inventors

Framingham, MA, United States of America

Leigh C McLellan