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:
Jun. 19, 2012
Filed:
Apr. 14, 2004
Rajiv Goel, Milpitas, CA (US);
Jianyu Chen, San Jose, CA (US);
Scott Molloy, Mandalong, AU;
Chung T. Nguyen, San Jose, CA (US);
David Ward, Somerset, WI (US);
John Bettink, San Jose, CA (US);
Peramanayagam Marimuthu, Madurai, IN;
Rajiv Goel, Milpitas, CA (US);
Jianyu Chen, San Jose, CA (US);
Scott Molloy, Mandalong, AU;
Chung T. Nguyen, San Jose, CA (US);
David Ward, Somerset, WI (US);
John Bettink, San Jose, CA (US);
Peramanayagam Marimuthu, Madurai, IN;
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A method is disclosed for dynamically creating encapsulation and decapsulation chains and segmenting the packet-forwarding plane. A distributed router may comprise multiple cards, each exposing a subset of the router's physical interfaces. Some physical interfaces may be configured to send/receive only certain types and destinations of data packets. Some cards might not expose any physical interfaces configured to send/receive a particular type and destination of packet, making encapsulation and/or decapsulation chains for virtual interfaces that process data packets of the particular type useless on those cards. Therefore, instead of always creating both encapsulation and decapsulation chains for a virtual interface on a card, an aspect of the method dynamically determines which of the encapsulation and decapsulation chains are useful for a virtual interface on that card, and creates only those chains that are useful on that card. Thus, the packet-forwarding plane is segmented into independent encapsulation and decapsulation segments.