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:
Jul. 18, 2017
Filed:
Apr. 12, 2015
Ijsbrand Wijnands, Leuven, BE;
Gregory J. Shepherd, Eugene, OR (US);
Neale David Raymond Ranns, Basingstoke, GB;
Stewart Frederick Bryant, Merstham, GB;
Ijsbrand Wijnands, Leuven, BE;
Gregory J. Shepherd, Eugene, OR (US);
Neale David Raymond Ranns, Basingstoke, GB;
Stewart Frederick Bryant, Merstham, GB;
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
In one embodiment, for each particular multicast flow of a plurality of multicast flows of packets a particular consolidation encoding of a plurality of consolidation encodings is selected based on the sparseness of bit positions within a bit string corresponding to designated receiving packet switching devices of the particular multicast flow. The packet switching device sends one or more packets corresponding to said particular packet, with each of these one or more packets including designated receiving packet switching devices of the particular multicast flow in the header of said particular packet according to the particular consolidation encoding. In one embodiment, different consolidation encodings of the plurality of consolidation encodings are used for at least two different multicast flows of the plurality of multicast flows of packets. In one embodiment, each of said receiving packet switching devices is Bit Index Explicit Replication (BIER) Bit-Forwarding Router (BFR).