Lucent Technologies Inc.

Usama Anqud

Javier Antich

Kumar B Mehta

Rama Ramakrishnan

Venkat Manickayasagam

Richard Foote

A technique for managing loops between network devices such as customer and carrier edge devices involves monitoring the MAC moves that occur at a device to detect the existence of a loop and initiating a loop protection action if the MAC moves indicate that a loop exists. The number of MAC moves that indicates the existence of a loop is user programmable and pre-established in the device configuration. The number of MAC moves can be expressed as a MAC move threshold, which is defined in terms of, for example, a MAC move rate or a number of MAC moves. Typically, the loop protection action that is initiated in response to a detected loop involves blocking the flow of the looping packets at the corresponding device.

Managing loops between network devices by monitoring MAC moves

A technique for managing network traffic is disclosed. According to the technique, a set of VLAN IDs is explicitly identified for use with a first service. The rest of the customer traffic is considered as part of a default service. Traffic that is received at a PE from a customer is examined to identify whether or not the traffic belongs to the first service. For example, the VLAN ID and incoming port of a packet is compared to the set of VLAN IDs that were allocated to the first service on the respective port. Traffic that is identified as belonging to the first service is 'extracted' from the default service and forwarded on a path that is related to the first service. The remaining traffic is forwarded on a path that is related to the default service. The service extraction technique can be implemented across an MPLS domain.

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San Ramon, CA, United States of America

Usama Anqud