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:
Mar. 04, 2008
Filed:
May. 15, 2002
Jan Vandenhoudt, Turnhout, BE;
Alan Mimms, Spokane, WA (US);
Jan Vandenhoudt, Turnhout, BE;
Alan Mimms, Spokane, WA (US);
Alcatel Lucent, Paris, FR;
Abstract
A shared memory packet switch fabric whose scheduling task is distributed to multiple egress schedulers residing on multiple egress control units and whose data storage is distributed to multiple packet buffer units, where the schedulers and the packet buffer units are interconnected via high speed links. An ingress control unit receives and transmits a packet to one of a plurality of packet buffer units (PBUs) making up the switch fabric. The receiving PBU stores the packet in memory and transmits a notification message with the memory information to all interested egress control units. If an egress control unit receiving the notification has enough queue space, it stores the memory information in its queue. The egress control unit then transmits a booking message indicating that it is to request the packet in the future. When the packet is to be scheduled for forwarding according to a scheduling algorithm run by the egress control unit, the egress control unit transmits a request message for retrieving the packet from the PBU.