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:
Apr. 26, 2011
Filed:
Feb. 28, 2005
Robert Bowser, Copley, OH (US);
Robert Bowser, Copley, OH (US);
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
Disclosed herein is a highly reliable management communication path to the CPU of a network device using in-band signaling by periodically servicing the Ethernet MAC, such as during system tick and/or watchdog timer refresh interrupts. The servicing selectively processes frames that are uniquely destined to or originating from a managing device. There are several possible techniques to uniquely identify frames as management frames. For example, one technique to identify a management frame involves the addition of an Ethernet MAC address to be used only for management frames, another technique employs a dedicated VLAN to be used only for management frames, a third technique employs a dedicated Layer 2 frame type for management frames, and another technique involves configuring the Ethernet MAC to operate in promiscuous mode and only process frames sent and received as unicast frames using a fixed source or destination MAC address.