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. 19, 2016
Filed:
Jan. 31, 2014
Derek Martin Spadaro, Huntsville, AL (US);
Mark Christian Rudolph, Madison, AL (US);
Timothy James Schlichter, Huntsville, AL (US);
Derek Martin Spadaro, Huntsville, AL (US);
Mark Christian Rudolph, Madison, AL (US);
Timothy James Schlichter, Huntsville, AL (US);
ADTRAN, Inc., Huntsville, AL (US);
Abstract
In a distributed switching environment, a plurality of switches are clustered together to form a stack, and it is generally desirable for forwarding tables, such as MAC tables, to be synchronized so that their mappings are consistent. When a switch receives a packet having a source address (e.g., MAC address) that is unknown, the switch is configured to disseminate the source address to the other switches of the stack. Rather than using software protocols to disseminate the source address, the switch instead transmits a multicast packet that (1) includes the unknown source address and (2) spoofs the other switches into believing that the packet was received on the same port from which the unknown source address was received on ingress to the stack. Thus, the other switches learn the unknown source address in hardware without having to rely on software for updating their forwarding tables.