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:
Sep. 26, 2006
Filed:
Apr. 02, 2003
Douglas Morgan Freimuth, New York, NY (US);
Ronald Mraz, South Salem, NY (US);
Erich Nahum, New York, NY (US);
Prashant Pradhan, New Rochelle, NY (US);
Sambit Sahu, Mahopac, NY (US);
John Michael Tracey, Yonkers, NY (US);
Douglas Morgan Freimuth, New York, NY (US);
Ronald Mraz, South Salem, NY (US);
Erich Nahum, New York, NY (US);
Prashant Pradhan, New Rochelle, NY (US);
Sambit Sahu, Mahopac, NY (US);
John Michael Tracey, Yonkers, NY (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
The present invention provides a method, computer program product, and data processing system for efficiently recovering state and performing failover of a network offload engine. The present invention distinguishes between the hard state and the soft state of a protocol. Hard state is state information that, when lost, leads to incorrect protocol behavior. Soft state is state information that may be lost or become inconsistent without loss of correctness. The present invention ensures correctness by always being able to recover the hard state of the protocol. A preferred embodiment of the present invention performs a failover of a network offload engine by temporarily blocking the reception of network packets, recovering hard state from host information, resuming network operation using a substitute network offload engine, and recovering soft state from the subsequent network activity.