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. 28, 2002
Filed:
Mar. 08, 1999
Joris Johannes Maria Wils, Acton, MA (US);
James Scott Hiscock, Rockport, MA (US);
William Daniel Townsend, Groton, MA (US);
3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A network is operated such that message forwarding traffic is shared among routers in a load-sharing set. The routers are respectively associated with different non-overlapping subspaces of a source address space from which source addresses of source nodes on the network are drawn, and each router has an identifier uniquely identifying the router in the load-sharing set. Address request messages identifying a predetermined forwarding route are broadcast on the network by source nodes, each request message containing a source address of the broadcasting node. In response to each address request message, each router determines whether the source address is within the address subspace associated with the router, and if so returns the router's identifier to the source node. When a message is to be transmitted from a source node to a destination node on another network via a router, the source node transmits the message on the network along with the identifier returned in response to the address request message broadcast by the source node. Each router forwards only those messages that contain the router's identifier.