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:
May. 03, 1994
Filed:
Jun. 18, 1992
Israel Cidon, Haifa, IL;
David W Davenport, Raleigh, NC (US);
Jeffrey H Derby, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
John G Dudley, Raleigh, NC (US);
Inder S Gopal, Fort Lee, NJ (US);
James P Janniello, Stamford, CT (US);
Marc A Kaplan, Katonah, NY (US);
Francis R Koperda, Raleigh, NC (US);
Shay Kutten, Rockaway, NJ (US);
Kenneth H Potter, Jr, Raleigh, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corp., Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A packet communications system provides for point-to-point packet routing and multicast packet routing to limited subsets of nodes in the network, using a routing field in the packet header which is processed according to two different protocols. A third protocol is provided in which a packet can be multicast to the limited subset even when launched from a node which is not a member of the subset. The routing field includes a first portion which contains the route labels necessary to deliver the packet to the multicast subset. A second portion of the routing field contains the multicast subset identifier which can then be used to deliver the packet to all of the members of the multicast subset. Provision is made to backtrack deliver the packet to the last node identified before the multicast subset if that last node is itself a member of the subset.