Hewlett-packard Company

Paul T Congdon

Michael I Thompson

John L Burnett

Frank Fiduccia, Deceased

K Monroe Bridges

Paul R Zimmer

Brian Krelle

Sundararajan Subramaniam

Robert D Snyder

A method and system are provided for trunking multiple links between a switch and a server. Server drivers recognize and automatically configure additional installed network interface cards (NICs) or multi-port NICs as group members. A monolithic driver, or an overlaying driver shim makes the group of NICs appear to be a single NIC to the server operating system and clients. Multiple NICs having the same MAC address and appearing on different ports are connected directly to a switch which treats the group as a single logical port. Using a deterministic algorithm, the switch looks up a received packet's destination in the address table. A list of possible ports for reaching the server and a flag indicating that the server is to be reached via this trunked group of ports are retrieved. The switch selects a port based upon the packet's source address. On the trunk to the clients, the server driver performs the same deterministic algorithm on the destination addresses. The invention supports fault tolerance. In one embodiment, a single switch is connected to a server via multiple NIC links. In another embodiment, the server is connected via multiple NIC links to a plurality of switches. To mitigate effects of the same source MAC address appearing on packets received from multiple ports in a group, the switch is notified that it is acceptable to see the server's MAC address appearing on several ports and is directed not to notify the system operator thereof.

Method and system for link level server/switch trunking

A configuration agent allows a network node seeking to be automatically configured with an IP address and a default gateway address to be configured as its own gateway. In first and second embodiments of the present invention, the configuration agent resides on a network device (such as a switch or bridge) that is coupled to two network segments, with one network segments including a node to be configured and another network segment including a server capable of automatically providing configuration parameters. In the first embodiment, the configuration agent acts as a snoopy agent. Messages from the configuration server to the node to be configured are 'snooped' to discover messages containing an IP address and a default gateway address. Such messages are altered to copy the IP addresses offered to the nodes seeking configuration to the default gateway addresses, and the messages are sent on their way, thereby causing the node seeking to be configured to be its own default gateway. In the second embodiment of the invention, the configuration acts as a proxy agent. From the point of view of the node to be configured, the proxy agent appears to be a configuration agent. From the point of view of the configuration server, the proxy agent appears to be a relay agent if the configuration server and the node to be configured are on different subnets. When the configuration server sends messages to the node to be configured (possibly treating the proxy agent as a relay agent), the proxy agent intercepts the message and copies the offered IP address to the default gateway address in the message, thereby causing the node seeking to be configured to be configured as its own gateway. The proxy agent also substitutes its IP address for the IP address of the actual configuration server, thereby causing the node seeking to be configured to treat the proxy agent as the configuration agent.

Method and apparatus for configuring a network node to be its own gateway

A method and apparatus are presented for an improved data transferring technique between a network and a computing system. A network adapter implements a data transfer from a network to the memory of a destination computing system, accumulating a checksum of all data transferred. The dedicated hardware allows data to be transferred through it and a checksum to be accumulated without intervention by the processor of the destination computing system. Software corrections can generate a checksum of the header data and then generate a net checksum by subtracting the header checksum from the gross checksum accumulated by the dedicated hardware, thus achieving the desired result with minimal intervention by the processor of the destination computing system.

Calculation of network data check sums by dedicated hardware with

A computing system is connected to a network. The computing system includes a network adapter and a main memory. The network adapter receives from the network a network packet having a plurality of headers. The network adapter inserts at least one pad byte within one of the plurality of headers to cause the plurality of headers in the network packet to be aligned along predetermined multi-byte boundaries. For example, the multi-byte boundaries are four-byte boundaries. After inserting the at least one pad byte, the network adapter forwards the network packet to the main memory.

Network adapter for inserting pad bytes into packet link headers based

A system implements checksumming of a network packet to be sent over a network. A processor constructs the network packet within a main memory. The network packet is transferred from the main memory to a packet storage memory within a network adapter. During the transfer, the network adapter calculates a checksum for the network packet. The network adapter then inserts the checksum into the network packet within the packet storage memory. The network adapter then sends the network packet to the network. In order to calculate the checksum for the network packet, hardware within the network adapter 'snoops' an internal bus within the network adapter as the network packet is transported to the packet storage memory. Also, a checksum header is prepended to the network packet which includes control information for checksumming. This control information includes, for example, an indication whether the network adapter is to calculate a checksum and a specification of what data in the network packet is to be checksummed. The control information may additionally include a location within network packet where the checksum is to be inserted.

Growing community of inventors

Sacramento, CA, United States of America

Paul T Congdon