Tellabs Petaluma, Inc.

3Com Corporation

Zhidan Cheng

Allen Tsz-Chiu Wong

Chung-Wen Soung

Frank R Pereira

Luis A Daly

Joseph Tsyr-Shya Sun

Tapan Lala

An Internet Group Multicast Protocol (IGMP) proxy provides network redundancy to prevent a severed or damaged line, or a malfunctioning router interface from denying services to the IGMP proxy by outputting the multicast group addresses that are received by the IGMP proxy to a first multicast interface that is electrically connected to a first router interface of a router, and to a second multicast interface that is electrically connected to a second router interface of the router.

System and method of protecting an IGMP proxy

A multicasting network includes a number of routers that are connected together to form a ring. The routers include a source router that identifies incoming multicasting data packets, and forwards the multicasting data packets in both directions on the ring. The routers also include forwarding routers that identify incoming multicasting data packets, and forwards the multicasting data packets in only one direction on the ring. Further, each ring has two terminating routers that receive forwarded data packets on two external nodes, and accept forwarded data packets from only a first external node and not from a second external node. When a fault condition is detected that prevents data packets from being forwarded in a first direction on the ring, the routers down stream of the fault condition reconfigure themselves to receive forwarded data packets from the second direction.

Fault-tolerant multicasting network

A router stores a value that indicates the maximum number of channels that can be output to a group, and the number of channels that are output to the group. When a member of the group indicates a channel change selection from a first channel to a second channel, the router drops the first channel before outputting the second channel when the maximum number of channels and the number of channels are equal.

System and method of operating the system that responds to channel change requests without causing macro-blocking

Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel redirection is accomplished by automatically redirecting tunnel initiator or network source for incoming call to another tunnel terminator or network destination according to traffic load, resource availability, or system reliability in VPN environment. Pointed terminator redirects call by sending special call clear message to tunnel initiator with IP address of recommended terminator in pool or set during PPP authentication. Initiator terminates current session with pointed terminator, establishes tunnel and/or session with recommended terminator, and starts processing again without terminating incoming call.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Zhidan Cheng