Alcatel-lucent USA Inc.

Ramanaravanan Ramakrishnan

Krishna Sankaran

Rahul Kasralikar

Prashanth Ishwar

John Rigby

Thippanna Hongal

Path information is obtained in a VPLS-based network by generating special Layer 2 frames (referred to herein as 'trace-request frames'), performing source MAC filtering to identify the trace-request frames, and generating a special frame (referred to herein as a 'trace-reply frame') when the source MAC filtering identifies a trace-request frame. Upon identifying a trace-request frame, path information is collected and embedded into the trace-reply frame. The trace-reply frame is then sent to the originating node where the path information is used to learn the path that the trace-request frame traversed. By sending multiple trace-request frames with different source MAC addresses, path information received from source MAC filtering at different nodes in the VPLS-based network can be collected and used to learn an entire path of interest.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Ramanaravanan Ramakrishnan