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:
Mar. 21, 2000
Filed:
Sep. 11, 1997
John A Flanders, Ashland, MA (US);
David C Ready, Westwood, MA (US);
Steven Van Seters, Stow, MA (US);
Leonard Schwartz, Bedford, MA (US);
William D Townsend, Groton, MA (US);
3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
At least a portion of the data units in a bridge/router device are analyzed for purposes of filtering by employing high speed logic circuits. A data unit is analyzed by such logic circuits by examining the header portion of the data unit, employing information obtained from the header portion to designate possible output ports for transmission of the data unit, examining a predefined per-port filter enable indicator to determine whether filtering is to be applied to the data unit, and applying filtering for each respective port for which the per-port filter enable indicator indicates that filtering is to be applied. Filtering is also implemented with logic circuits and executed at high speed. Filtering may be executed based on MAC address group, port group, combination MAC address and port group, protocol type, and non-unicast traffic frequency. Data units that cannot be analyzed by the logic circuits are analyzed by software.