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:
Jan. 28, 2003
Filed:
Jun. 25, 1999
David A. Hughes, Mountain View, CA (US);
Bruce S. Davie, Belmont, MA (US);
Jeremy Lawrence, Newtown, AU;
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A merging ATM switch forwards to a common downstream ATM switch ATM data cells that it receives from a plurality of upstream ATM switches. The merging ATM switch may have different upstream ATM switches employ different respective virtual-circuit identifiers for those commonly destined data cells, but it uses a common virtual-circuit identifier in forwarding them to the downstream switch. The upstream ATM switches intersperse among the data cells forward-directed resource-management cells bearing the virtual-channel identifiers that those upstream switches use on the commonly destined data cells. The merging ATM switch responds to such forward-directed resource-management cells by sending corresponding forward-directed resource-management cells to the downstream ATM switch and reverse-directed resource-management cells to the upstream ATM switches. The forward-directed resource-management cells sent to the downstream ATM switch bear the common virtual-circuit identifier, whereas the reverse-directed resource-management cells sent to the upstream ATM switches bear the respective virtual-circuit identifiers that those upstream ATM switches placed in the forward-directed resource-management cells. By so doing, the merging switch avoids the ambiguity that resource-management-cell forwarding other-wise entails.