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:
Jul. 15, 2003
Filed:
Jun. 02, 1999
Jean-Lou Dupont, Kirkland, CA;
Marconi Communications, Inc., Cleveland, OH (US);
Abstract
A system and method for path protection switching in ring networks is provided in which the path protection switch occurs at the transmitter node that initiated a particular virtual channel of data packets onto the ring network. A failure in one of the data communication-paths of the ring network is detected by the network nodes on either side of the failure. These network nodes then initiate a wrap mechanism that embeds a special feedback wrap indicator flag into packets received at the two nodes, and then wraps (or transmits back) these packets (with the feedback indicator) in the opposite direction towards the transmitter node that initiated the packets onto the ring. Each transmitter node detects whether received packets are associated with virtual channels that it initiated onto the ring and if so detected, then determine whether the feedback indicator flag is set. If so, then a protection switch occurs at the transmitter node so that additional packets associated with the particular virtual channel are switched in a direction opposite to the failure. A ring continuity mechanism is used to determine when to revert the transmitter nodes back to their prior operating state, and a garbage collection function is also included.