The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 30, 2025
Filed:
Jun. 24, 2024
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Kyle Andrew Donald Mestery, Woodbury, MN (US);
Vincent Parla, North Hampton, NH (US);
John Michael Lake, Cary, NC (US);
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A system and method are provided for placing network functions among respective locations in a network. The locations at which the network functions are placed can be nodes and network devices within the network. These nodes can be selected, e.g., based on which network devices have available capacity and or specialized hardware (e.g., accelerator sin a data processing units (DPUs)) that is optimized for particular network functions. The network functions can include an inline network function that is provisioned directly in a data plane of one of the network devices (e.g., in-lined directly in a hardware offload device without a virtual machine and without a container). The decision of where to place the network functions can be based on a performance metric (e.g., representing available computational/memory resources at the network nodes) and/or a network-function metric (e.g., representing consumed computational/memory resources by the network functions) to improve system performance.