Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP

Nortel Networks Corporation

Ciena Corporation

Rockstar Consortium US LP

Rockstar Bidco, LP

Other

Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Rpx Clearinghouse LLC

Constellation Technologies, LLC

Paul Allen Bottorff

Norival R Figueira

Guyves Achtari

Huiwen Li

Donald Fedyk

Nigel Lawrence Bragg

David Allan

Marc Holness

Michael S Schlansker

Simon P Parry

Robert Friskney

David Wright Martin

Stephen G Low

Richard Brand

Don Fedyk

Jean Tourrilhes

Bashar Abdullah

Ronald Joseph Gagnon

Charles L Hudson

Bernard Francois St-Denis

Joseph M Regan

Jose Renato G Santos

Mark Gravel

Sebastien Tandel

Mark Temple Cobbold

Juliano Vacaro

Roger Carroll

Timothy James Armstrong

Alan Hurren

Mehrnaz Sharifian

Bijan Raahemi

Juliano Cardoso Vacaro

Norival Figueria

Yuet C Lee

Barak Perlman

Dorian Conde Langbeck

A cost effective congestion isolation for lossless Ethernet utilizing random selection is provided. Upon detecting congestion at one of its egress ports, a downstream device randomly selects a data packet received at one or more of its ingress ports for isolation in a congested priority queue at the ingress port. The downstream device sends a congestion isolation message, including a list of isolation hashes to an upstream device to identify data packets selected for isolation. Upon receipt, the upstream device identifies data packets selected for isolation and begins to queue such packets in a congested priority queue of the upstream device. When priority-based flow control is triggered, the upstream device ceases transmission of packets in the congested priority queue only, while allowing continued transmission of non-isolated data packets.

Cost effective congestion isolation for lossless ethernet

In an example, a hierarchical chaining gateway (hCG) includes a first communication interface corresponding to a first domain using a first chaining protocol, and a second communication interface corresponding to a second domain using a second and different chaining protocol. The hCG receives a service packet including a first service function chain header via the first communication interface. The hCG also identifies a key identifier in the service packet, and retrieves a second service function chain header based on the key identifier. Then, the hCG transforms the service packet by substituting the first service function chain header corresponding to first domain in the service packet with the second service function chain header corresponding to the second domain. Next, the hCG transmits the service packet including the second service function chain header via the second communication interface corresponding to the second domain.

Transforming a service packet from a first domain to a second domain

Some examples herein disclose a load balancer to identify a service function among multiple service functions based on an available capacity. The load balancer modifies a switch address in the packet and distributes the packet to the identified service function based on the modified switch address.

Packet distribution based on an identified service function

Examples include receiving a rule for communication between a first group and a second group of endpoints in a network. The network may include a plurality of networking devices. Examples include receiving a first identifier for the first group and a second identifier and a network address for the second group, receiving composition data of the network. Examples also include determining a topology of the network comprising a first number of communication paths and determining a reduced topology based on the rule, the first identifier, and the second identifier. The first number of paths may link a first networking device out of the plurality of networking devices to each device of the plurality of the networking devices. The second number of paths may link the first networking device to the second group.

Reduced topologies

A system may include a first network having a first communications protocol, a second network having a second communications protocol and at least one edge device in communication with the first network and the second network. The edge device may include a translator to translate a first address associated with the first network and based on the first communications protocol into a second address associated with the second network and based on the second communications protocol. The second address may include a first address portion based on a first fragment of the first address, a second address portion having a translation key based on a second fragment of the first address and a third address portion having a locator address.

Address translation

Some examples herein disclose identifying a service function chain based on a switch address from a packet. The examples disclose modifying the switch address to an address corresponding to a service function based on the identified service function chain. The examples also disclose forwarding the packet to the service function according to the modified switch address.

Modifying an address to forward a packet to a service function

According to examples, an apparatus may include a processor and a memory on which is stored machine readable instructions. The instructions may cause the processor to intercept a packet from a downstream service function classifier, in which the packet includes metadata that specifies an ordered set of service functions within a service function chain to be implemented on the packet, generate a correlation cookie that associates the packet with the service function chain, and encode the correlation cookie into the packet. The instructions may also cause the processor to store the correlation cookie and the metadata in a cache to correlate the correlation cookie and the metadata and send the packet with the encoded correlation cookie to the service function provider.

Service function chains using correlation cookies

In accordance with examples disclosed herein, a filter table for Media Access Control (MAC) chaining contains mappings between signature addresses, service functions, and management functions, to identify corresponding service function chains. The filter table is to store statistic information about the packet. A controller is to uniquely identify a management function corresponding to the signature address, and modify tables of packet signature addresses usable to modify the packet to cause the packet to be forwarded to the management function. The controller is to update the statistic information about the packet.

Filter tables for management functions

One example provides a network device including a queue to receive frames from a source, a processor, and a memory communicatively coupled to the processor. The memory stores instructions causing the processor, after execution of the instructions by the processor, to determine whether a flow control threshold of the queue has been exceeded, and in response to determining that the flow control threshold of the queue has been exceeded, generate a message to be sent to the source of the frame that exceeded the flow control threshold. The message includes a pause duration for which the source is to stop transmitting frames.

Flow control in a network

In frame switched communication networks, information is forwarded from a source to a destination based on a destination address. In IEEE 802 networks these addresses are called Media Access Control (MAC) addresses. MAC addresses identify the source and destination station of each frame, however typically don't contain any subfields which identify the physical or logical location (or subnetwork) of the station. Such an address can be called a flat address. The entities of networks using IEEE 802 MAC addresses don't have methods for aggregating MAC addresses or for forwarding frames based on aggregates rather than station MAC addresses. The use of station MAC addresses for frame forwarding limits the scaling, lowers the efficiency, reduces the security and raises the cost of these networks. The method described here solves the MAC address aggregation problem by using a summary MAC address to represent an aggregate of summarized MAC addresses.

Method for aggregating media access control addresses using a summary media access control address(es)

An optical communication device comprises an input/output configured to be coupled to an optical communications line, and a passive optical loopback module coupled to the input and configured to receive optical signals from the input/output, the loopback module being further configured to reflect incoming signals of a test wavelength to the input/output.

Passive optical loopback

Frame contained destination information may be used by a switch to identify an appropriate output port for a given frame without performing a table access operation. This reduces the processing requirements of the switch to enable the switch to handle frames more efficiently. The frame contained destination information may be contained in the frame's local destination MAC addresses (DA) such that a portion of the DA directly indicates, for each switch that handles the frame, an output port for that switch. Different portions of the DA may be used by different switches, depending on where they are in the network hierarchy. Large switches may also use sub-fields within their allocated portion in the DA to identify internal switching components. A location resolution server may be provided to store and distribute IP and MAC addresses and respond to local ARP requests on the local domain.

Method and apparatus for direct frame switching using frame contained destination information

A system and method are provided to route packets in a data center network. Individual packets are encapsulated at an edge of the data center network, so that each encapsulated packet includes a set of header fields, such as a tenant identifier. For each encapsulated packet, a hash class is determined from the set of header fields. A routing virtual local area network (VLAN) is selected for the packet based on the tenant identifier and the hash class.

Routing encapsulated data packets onto selected VLANs

An edge device is used to support a backbone provider bridging network to facilitate interconnection of a plurality of networks. The edge device is coupled between the backbone and a first one of the networks, and is operable to encapsulate data units received from the first network with a header, and to forward the encapsulated data unit to the backbone. The header is indicative of a tunnel that is used to support traffic from the first network to a second network over the backbone. The edge device also de-encapsulates data units received from the backbone that are destined for the first network.

Backbone provider bridging networks

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Portola Valley, CA, United States of America

Paul Allen Bottorff