International Business Machines Corporation

Prashant Pradhan

Sambit Sahu

Douglas Morgan Freimuth

Erich Miles Nahum

Ronald Mraz

John Michael Tracey

Elbert C Hu

Debanjan Saha

Michael R Haley

Sanghwan Lee

Manpreet Singh

Donna N Dillenberger

Renu Tewari

Arup Acharya

Milton H Hernandez

Gopal Sarma Pingali

Dilip Dinkar Kandlur

Roland Mraz

Elbert V Hu

John Tracey

Erich Nahum

A number of improvements in network adapters that offload protocol processing from the host processor are provided. Specifically, mechanisms for handling memory management and optimization within a system utilizing an offload network adapter are provided. The memory management mechanism permits both buffered sending and receiving of data as well as zero-copy sending and receiving of data. In addition, the memory management mechanism permits grouping of DMA buffers that can be shared among specified connections based on any number of attributes. The memory management mechanism further permits partial send and receive buffer operation, delaying of DMA requests so that they may be communicated to the host system in bulk, and expedited transfer of data to the host system.

Supporting memory management in an offload of network protocol processing

Managing application performance on a network. A network graph is generated from a set of application endpoints on the network. The network graph is annotated by associating one or more of the application endpoints with at least one of a corresponding latency annotation or a corresponding available bandwidth annotation. An end to end plan is formulated from the annotated network graph, wherein the plan maps one or more application requirements onto the plurality of paths in accordance with one or more end to end control adjustments including at least one of a server selection adjustment, an internet service provider (ISP) selector, or an overlay routing adjustment.

Methods and computer program products for managing application performance on a network

A system and method for scalable status change detection in a network of nodes includes embedding node coordinate positions into a virtual map environment. A cluster of nodes are represented with a representative node to form a hierarchy of nodes and clusters where changes in a status of the representative node imply a status change in the nodes of the cluster. By selectively monitoring the representative nodes for the changes in status, the representative nodes create a capability for scalable monitoring of the network.

System and method for detecting status changes in a network using virtual coordinate mapping

A number of improvements in network adapters that offload protocol processing from the host processor are provided. Specifically, a mechanism for improving connection establishment in a system utilizing an offload network adapter is provided. The connection establishment mechanism provides the ability to offload connection establishment and maintenance of connection state information to the offload network adapter. As a result of this offloading of connection establishment and state information maintenance, the number of communications needed between the host system and the offload network adapter may be reduced. In addition, offloading of these functions to the offload network adapter permits bulk notification of established connections and state information to the host system rather than piecemeal notifications as is present in known computing systems.

Apparatus and method for supporting connection establishment in an offload of network protocol processing

Apparatus and method for supporting memory management in an offload of network protocol processing

A method and system for obtaining and storing accurate skills data relative to human resource objects of an enterprise. Relevant data is extracted from runtime processes that monitor the activities of the human resource objects and a metric value indicative of a skill level attained for each of a list of skills is calculated for each human resource object.

Method and system for developing an accurate skills inventory using data from delivery operations

A method of generating an annotated network topology of a network is described. The method includes; deriving a network topology by performing a route tracing utility between each pair of endpoints to determine the route taken by packets; initially annotating each network path with an initial value; determining the available bandwidth of a path connecting a pair of endpoints by performing Transfer Control Protocol (TCP) flows between the pair of endpoints; identifying a bottleneck link in the network path, and annotating all edges to generate an annotated network topology wherein available bandwidth annotation of links inside the network is determined using end-to-end network measurements.

Method for generating an annotated network topology

Systems and methods are disclosed for differentiated handling of VoIP call control messages according to their importance and functionality, thus providing to VoIP infrastructures a level of robust call control similar to that in PSTN networks. SIP messages are classified by their type or content, and resources of a VoIP call control server are allocated to the SIP messages according to a policy. The scheme also provides overload protection and prioritized handling of certain kinds of requests in VoIP call control servers.

Differentiated handling of SIP messages for VoIP call control

Method for supporting connection establishment in an offload of network protocol processing

A number of improvements in network adapters that offload protocol processing from the host processor are provided. Specifically, an improved mechanism for handling receipt of data packets in a system utilizing an offload network adapter. The offload network adapter may include logic that permits the offload network adapter to delay notification of data reception to the host system in different ways. The advantage of delaying the notice of data packet reception to the host system is the potential for aggregation of several data packets, which can arrive immediately after the first one, for example, in a single notification. Given a stream with continuous data packet arrival, a value may be set, either statically or dynamically, for notification delay and this value may be configurable for the host system per communication socket.

Apparatus and method for supporting received data processing in an offload of network protocol processing

A method and system architecture to manage system resources in such a way as to provide service time guarantees to various classes of work using the system. In the case that the system resources are not sufficient to provide the specified service time guarantees, a method and system architecture is provided to limit work into the system such that the guarantees are satisfied and the revenue derived from the system is maximized.

System and method for adaptive admission control and resource management for service time guarantees

The present invention provides a method, computer program product, and data processing system for efficiently recovering state and performing failover of a network offload engine. The present invention distinguishes between the hard state and the soft state of a protocol. Hard state is state information that, when lost, leads to incorrect protocol behavior. Soft state is state information that may be lost or become inconsistent without loss of correctness. The present invention ensures correctness by always being able to recover the hard state of the protocol. A preferred embodiment of the present invention performs a failover of a network offload engine by temporarily blocking the reception of network packets, recovering hard state from host information, resuming network operation using a substitute network offload engine, and recovering soft state from the subsequent network activity.

State recovery and failover of intelligent network adapters

A method, apparatus, and computer instructions for transferring data objects. A request for a data object is received at a communication adapter. A determination is made as to whether the data object is stored in a memory in the communication adapter in response to receiving the request. The data object is transferred from the memory to a receiver of the data object through the communication adapter in which transfer of the data across a bus connecting the communication adapter to the data processing system is unnecessary in response to the data object being present in the memory.

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New Rochelle, NY, United States of America

Prashant Pradhan