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:
Oct. 29, 2002
Filed:
Mar. 29, 1999
Daniel C. Tappan, Boxborough, MA (US);
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
In a communications-networking autonomous system consisting of an OSPF domain, autonomous-system border routers (I-ASBR and E-ASBR) cause exchange of hierarchical forwarding labels whose hierarchies are based on OSPF areas. A border router transmits into the domain an OSPF LSA Update message containing an AS-External LSA whose External Route Tag field other routers interpret as specifying a label to be used for forwarding. When that LSA is flooded into the OSPF domain, area border routers respond by flooding new LSAs created from the received one by replacing the label contained in the External Route Tag field with labels that specify their forwarding tables' locations containing information for forwarding to the originating autonomous system border router. In so doing, they enable packets destined for an extra-domain location to be forwarded through the autonomous system without requiring non-border routers to allocate labels to the exterior location or to border routers outside their areas. This enables a networking backbone to conserve its label space even though it carries a large variety of external traffic.