Tellabs Operations, Inc.

Vishal Sharma

Srinivas V Makam

Changcheng Huang

Kenneth R Owens

Timothy Y Chow

Steven R Dunstan

Charles E Rohrs

Joseph Cerra

Dmitry Levandovsky

Saadeddine Mneimneh

In a multi-protocol label system (MPLS) carrying data, a working path carries data from a starting point or node to a destination point or node via a working path. The working path includes the switches and physical media linking starting point and the destination point. MPLS system reliability is enhanced by way of a protection path, over which data can be carried from the starting point to the destination point upon a detected failure along the working path. Upstream messages inform one or more MPLS switching systems to make a switchover from a working path to a protection path.

Protection/restoration of MPLS networks

Recovery time upon the failure of a link or switching system in an asynchronous data network can be minimized if downstream data switches provide upstream messages indicating to upstream switching system that the downstream traffic arrived in tact and was properly handled. Upon this loss or failure of the upstream status message to an upstream switching system, an upstream switching system can reroute data traffic around a failed link or failed switch with a minimal amount of lost data. The upstream status message is conveyed from a downstream switching system to an upstream switching system via a reverse notification tree data pathway. The reverse notification pathway is established by using a messaging protocol between network switches by which the working and protection paths, among other things, are established.

Method for establishing an MPLS data network protection pathway

Recovery time upon the failure of a link or switching system in an asynchronous data network can be minimized if downstream data switches provide upstream messages indicating to upstream switching system that the downstream traffic arrived in tact and was properly handled. Upon this loss or failure of the upstream status message to an upstream switching system, an upstream switching system can reroute data traffic around a failed link or failed switch with a minimal amount of lost data. The upstream status message is conveyed from a downstream switching system to an upstream switching system via a reverse notification tree data pathway.

Reverse notification tree for data networks

Method and apparatus for detecting MPLS network failures

A low-cost, high-speed data switching system and method uses several parallel switching systems or fabrics. In one of various embodiments, for example, the constituent data flows in a data stream can be selectively routed to a switching fabric that has the lowest input data rate. Data flows can be assigned to the various switching fabrics so as to balance the amount of data passing through each parallel system. Data flows can be re-assigned on an as-needed basis to insure maximum throughput. In the case where a data flow initially routed into one switching fabric must be re-routed to a different fabric, the ordering of data packets can be preserved by withholding the transfer of packets through the second fabric until the packets previously sent into the first fabric have cleared. Methods and apparatus of the present invention find application to parallel computing as well.

Method and apparatus to switch data flows using parallel switch fabrics

Recovery time upon the failure of a link or switching system in an asynchronous data network can be minimized if downstream data switches can provide upstream messages to upstream switching systems indicating to upstream switching systems that the downstream traffic arrived in tact and was properly handled. In one embodiment, the loss or failure of the upstream status message to an upstream switching system, causes an upstream switching system to reroute data traffic around a failed link or failed switch with a minimal amount of lost data.

Low speed switches operated under the common control of a global scheduler can be used to switch high speed data while preserving packet ordering if the incoming packets are queued in a temporal order. By operating several low speed switches in parallel, a high-speed switching capacity can be realized.

High-speed parallel cross bar switch

A method for validating a path through a switched optical network is disclosed. A bit error rate at the end of the path is determined. The path is validated if the bit error rate is within a predefined range.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Vishal Sharma