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. 09, 2006
Filed:
Oct. 25, 2000
Daniel R. Cassiday, Topsfield, MA (US);
David L. Satterfield, Tewksbury, MA (US);
Daniel R. Cassiday, Topsfield, MA (US);
David L. Satterfield, Tewksbury, MA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
Methods and apparatus are disclosed for enabling nodes in a data network having interconnect links to continue to transmit data when a link fails. This is done in realtime, in a manner transparent to upper-level clients, and at a hardware level without software intervention. A method is described in which a data packet is received or stored in a transmitter buffer at an originating node having a failed link where the data packet is scheduled to use the failed link. The data packet is routed to a failover storage area. The failover storage area is a shared resource in the node and consists of two first-in, first-out stacks for processing and routing the failover data packets. If needed, an alternative link is selected for the data packet and the data packet is routed to a transmitter associated with the alternative link. An alternative link is selected using a primary and secondary routing table, also part of the shared resource of the node. The data packet is then transmitted to a receiver for the alternative link at a destination or multihop node. This allows the data packet to reach the remote end of a failed link by sharing alternate links connecting the local and remote ends of a failed link.