Cisco Technology, Inc.

Pui Li

Harsh Singh

Somnath Mitra

Joel Craig Naumann

Denis Claveloux

In one embodiment, a method includes detecting packet congestion in a network device that includes a switch, and a plurality of components operable to transmit and receive data packets from and to the switch. The method includes, in response to detecting packet congestion, transmitting an Ethernet pause frame to at least one of the plurality of components, the at least one component identified as a source of a data packet that caused the packet congestion, and transmitting a backward congestion notification (BCN) packet to the at least one component, the BCN packet including some data payload of the data packet that caused the packet congestion. The method includes regulating an offending packet stream originated from the at least one component relative to a non-offending packet stream originated from the at least one component to lower traffic load of the offending packet stream relative to the non-offending packet stream, where the data packet that caused the packet congestion belonging to the offending packet stream.

Flow based flow control in an ethernet switch backplane

In one embodiment, a flow control module aggregates indications of queuing resource utilization at devices attached to a switching fabric within a router and broadcasts that information out of band to all devices attached to the same switching fabric. When the flow control module identifies congestion at one of the attached devices according to the indications, the module may also cause a throttling of traffic sent to the congested device in addition to sending the out of band indication of the congestion to all the attached devices. Flow control modules for each of the attached devices provide local interrupts for reducing outbound traffic to a congested device according to the identification of that remote congestion.

Out of band flow control

Method and apparatus for queuing packets are disclosed. In one aspect, a method may comprise assigning each packet a first value; dynamically assigning each packet a second value; and queuing each packet for transmission using the first and second values.

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos Hills, CA, United States of America

Pui Li