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:
Jan. 21, 2014
Filed:
Nov. 01, 2010
Chandan Mishra, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Rohit Watve, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Dinesh G. Dutt, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Sanjay Sane, Fremont, CA (US);
Chandan Mishra, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Rohit Watve, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Dinesh G. Dutt, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Sanjay Sane, Fremont, CA (US);
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
Techniques are provided to enable a switch in a layer-2 multipath network to determine connectivity of a path to a destination switch. At a source switch, user flow parameters are determined for user flow packets to be transported in the layer-2 multipath network to a destination switch. The sourced switch determines a number of hops from it to the destination switch based on the user flow parameters. Timestamping is activated for time-to-live expiry packets received at the source switch and for time-to-live expiry packets received at the destination switch. One or more probe packets having user flow parameters matching the user flow parameters of user flow packets are generated so that the probe packets use the same path taken by the user flow packets between the source switch and the destination switch. In addition, a time-to-live value corresponding to the number of hops from the source switch to the destination switch is included in a hop count field of the one or more probe packets. The time-to-live value distinguishes the one or more probe packets from user flow packets. The one or more probe packets are sent in the layer-2 multipath network from the source switch to the destination switch. Connectivity between the source switch and the destination switch is determined based on the one or more probe packets.