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:
Oct. 08, 2013
Filed:
Nov. 07, 2008
Tienwei Chao, San Jose, CA (US);
Bill Shao, San Jose, CA (US);
Tienwei Chao, San Jose, CA (US);
Bill Shao, San Jose, CA (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A switch device includes a packet forwarding table for providing load balancing across servers in a server group. Each table entry maps a hash value to a server in the server group. A hash value can be computed from the destination MAC address, destination IP address, and destination service port in the header of a received packet. The packet forwarding table is searched to find an entry with a hash value that matches the computed hash value and to identify the server to which the matching hash value maps. The switch device forwards the packet to the identified server. Implementing load-balancing decisions in hardware enables packet switching at the line rate of the switch ports. In addition, the hardware-based load balancing performed by the switch device eliminates session tables and the memory to store them, enabling the switch device to handle an unlimited number of client connections.