Cisco Technology, Inc.

Liman Wei

Shigang Chen

Partha P Bhattacharya

Security policies that regulate communication packets on a network may be segmented into independent sets, where each security policy of an independent set does not regulate communication packets other than those defined for that set. A management algorithm is performed separately for each independent set, rather than for all of the security policies together.

Method and apparatus for managing security policies on a network

A method and apparatus for negotiating a shared secret among members of a multicast group are disclosed. A tree that represents the group is created and stored in a memory. Each node of the tree is associated with a group member. The shared secret is generated by traversing the tree in post-order, and at each node of the tree, recursively generating a partial key value for use in the shared secret and a base value for use in subsequent recursive partial key value generation. At each node, a partial key value is computed by accumulating the exponent portion of the Diffie-Hellman key equation and computing a new base value for use in subsequent computations. If a particular node has a left or right child sub-tree, each sub-tree is also recursively traversed in post-order fashion. When traversal of the entire tree is complete, all nodes have the shared secret key.

Method and apparatus for negotiating Diffie-Hellman keys among multiple parties using a distributed recursion approach

Enforcement firewalls and other security devices are located on a network for a given source node and destination node. Nodes in the network topology are programmatically identified as being part of a non-looping communication path between the source node and the destination node. These nodes may be part of a path closure set. Security devices that are part of the path closure set are identified as the enforcement security devices for the given source and destination node.

Method and apparatus for determining enforcement security devices in a network topology

A method is disclosed for removing redundancies from a list of data structures. A list of data structures is sorted by first attribute into sub-lists having a common first attribute. Each of these sub-lists is sorted by second attribute into sub-lists having a common first attribute and a common second attribute. Each of these sub-lists is combined into a single combined data structure that includes a third attribute set. Each third attribute set includes third attributes of the data structures in the sub-list from which the combined data structure including that set was formed.

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Liman Wei