International Business Machines Corporation

Cisco Technology, Inc.

Olivier Maurel

Olivier Bertin

Claude R Galand

Laurent Nicolas

Jean-Paul Chobert

Gerard Brun

Philippe Klein

Philippe Cuny

Eric Michel Levy-Abegnoli

Aline Fichou

Gerald Lebizay

Gerard Barucchi

Yves Ouvry

Jean-Luc Peter

Alain Pruvost

Denis Jean Albert Chevalier

Philippe Michel Bazot

Jean Bidard

Jean-Pierre Alfonsi

A method for operating a node in a computer network is disclosed, where the network is made up of nodes connected by links. The method has the steps: determining an alternate path for one or more links; reserving resources for the alternate path; and rerouting traffic on the alternate path in case of a link failure. The alternate path may be periodically updated. A plurality of alternate paths may be maintained. The alternate paths may not have any links in common. User traffic may be rerouted substantially simultaneously to each link of the alternate path in the event of failure of a primary path.

Method and system for a local and fast non-disruptive path switching in high speed packet switching networks

The present invention is directed to a high speed packet switching network and, in particular to a method and system for minimizing the time to establish a connection between an origin and a destination node. Due to high dynamicity of the traffic on transmission links, it is important to select a routing path according to a fully up-to-date information on all network resources. The simpler approach is to calculate a new path for each new connection request. This solution may be very time consuming because there are as many path selection operations as connection set up operations. On another hand, the calculation of paths based on an exhaustive exploration of the network topology, is a complex operation which may also take an inordinate amount of resources in large networks. Many of connections originated from a network node flow to the same destination network node. It is therefore possible to take a serious benefit in reusing the same already calculated paths for several connections towards the same node. The path calculated at the time the connection is requested is recorded in a Routing Database and updated each time a modification occurs in the network. Furthermore, alternate paths for supporting non-disruptive path switch on failure or preemption, and new paths towards potential destination nodes can be calculated and stored when the connection set up process is idle. These last operations are executed in background with a low processing priority and in absence of connection request.

Method and system for minimizing the connection set up time in high speed packet switching networks

The present invention is directed to a high speed packet switching network and, in particular to a method and system for minimizing the time to establish a connection between an origin and a destination node. A path calculated at the time the connection is requested is recorded in a Routing Database and updated each time a modification occurs in the network. Furthermore, alternate paths for supporting non-disruptive path switch on failure or preemption, and new paths towards potential destination nodes can be calculated and stored when the connection set up process is idle. These last operations are executed in background with a low processing priority and in absence of connection request.

In a high speed digital network including access nodes and network nodes each having topology data bases, a method for optimizing the connection set-up operations required for connecting a calling end-user attached to a local access node to a destination user attached to a remote access node, via a conventional connection set-up operation. An Access Node Connection Table (ANCT) in each access node stores a list of every remote access node for which the local access node has at least one user connection. A field in the locate reply message is defined for the destination remote Access Node Topology Database (ANTDB) and remote ANTDB information is inserted prior to sending the reply message. Locate reply message reception is monitored by the local access node, and upon reception an entry is created for the received remote ANTDB information in the local access node unless the remote access node was already identified in the local access node. An optimal path is then selected and connection set up. The ANCT is then updated accordingly.

Method and system for optimizing connection set-up operations in a high speed digital network

This method enables optimizing the time required for reestablishing connections between end users attached to a data communication network, which connections were disrupted due to a network failure. The network includes access nodes and transit nodes interconnected with network links/trunks (with no specific distinction being herein required between both designations of a communication line). The end users are attached to the network through access nodes and each said access node permanently stores an image of the current network trunk including the number N.sub.i of connections currently supported by said network trunk. Upon detection of a trunk failure, each access node supporting connections affected by said failure, is made aware of the total number (N.sub.i) of connections in each priority group affected by the failure, together with a network dependent parameter (TP) representing the elementary processing time required to reroute a single network connection. Then each access node may independently, start a first reconnection set-up procedure at a time Ri randomly selected between zero and (N.sub.i -n.sub.i) *TP, where n.sub.i is the number of connections supported by the access node in each priority group, and then space the required subsequent reconnections set-ups by a time equal to (T.sub.i -R.sub.i)/n.sub.i, with T.sub.i =N.sub.i *TP.

Method and system for optimizing the connection set up time in high

A method and system for reserving dynamically and in priority for each link of the network the exact amount of bandwidth necessary for the transmission of the network control traffic. An evaluation of the expected control traffic on each link of the network is performed in order to allocate a sufficient but minimum fraction of the link bandwidth and for allocating the maximum available bandwidth for the user traffic.

Dynamic bandwidth reservation for control traffic in high speed packet

High speed network nodes can establish new connections by preempting existing ones when insufficient bandwidth is available in the network. Numerous preemption priorities are arranged in a limited number of groups and a median priority level is defined within each group. This median, stored in the topology database of each node of the network, permits better bandwidth utilization per group while consuming very little memory space and generating very low traffic overhead.

Method for preempting connections in high speed packet switching networks

The routing paths between origin and destination nodes in a packet switching network are selected more efficiently by reducing the total number of links potentially visited by the routing algorithm. The path selection technique involves two phases, the first phase for principal links identification, and the second phase for selection of the best point-to-point path in the network. Principal paths are minimum hop count paths with a transmission delay less than a specified threshold. The algorithm limits the screening of the network links in the second phase to the principal links and excludes the secondary links. The exploration of a much smaller number of links has the advantage to considerably reduce the computation time required for the path selection. The fact the number of principal links is generally small compared with the total number of links potentially explored, allows to limit the additional processing time necessary in case of unsuccessful attempt.

Method and system for improving the processing time of the path

The auto-sequenced state machine according to the present invention has a programmable state duration which is independent from the logic speed, it may be adapted to any Moore state machine and may operate in metastability occurrence of the latches (2) of the state machine. The programming of a granularity of half a clock cycle provides a performance optimization by using a system of two clocks which are in opposite phase. Moreover, the state duration may be programmable on line. The auto-sequenced state machine is composed of a basic Moore state machine to which is connected a device (16) comprising a current state decoder (15) which decodes the current state signals Q(t) from the Moore state machine in order to select one of the biphase state timers (13) and one of the state timing programming circuits (12), and an OR circuit (11) which receives the terminal counts (TC0, . . . , TC3) issued from the current selected biphase state timer and generates the final current terminal count (7) to the latches (2) of Moore state machine.

Multistage timing circuit having multiple counters in each timer for

The method and apparatus for correcting one B-bit block in error in a memory organized in words comprising N B-bit blocks consist of appending to the data bits to be written into the memory words a limited number of error correction bits computed from a depopulated parity check matrix which gives the capability of only correcting one block in error and improving the memory failure rate by cyclically reading each word, correcting a block found in error if any and writing the corrected data bits with the corresponding error correction bits in place of the read word.

Method and apparatus for correction errors in a memory

Currently, routing algorithms compute all the available paths in the network, from a source node to a destination node before selecting the optimal route. The route computation is often time and resource consuming. Some paths are not acceptable due to the particular geographical configuration of the network. In the real world, large transport networks are not fully meshed. The present invention is based on the observation that networks are usually built around a hierarchical structure. A set of nodes, interconnected by high throughput lines, are used to build a `Backbone` (401) with a high degree of meshing to allow the redundancy and reliability required by the user. The other nodes or `local` nodes (404) are attached to one or several backbone nodes. It is the network designer responsibility, at the configuration time to define for each node what is its attribution: backbone (402) or local node (404). The list of the node attributions appears in the topology table (306) and is updated each time a node is added to or dropped from the network. The routing algorithm can take advantage of the particular network topology to drastically reduce the complexity of paths computation. For a given connection, only a limited number of nodes are eligible and are taken in account by the algorithm in the optimal route search. The object of the invention is to split the network into backbone and local nodes to speed up the path selection.

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Le Cannet, France

Olivier Maurel