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:
Dec. 05, 2017
Filed:
Dec. 08, 2014
Juniper Networks, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Kaushik Ghosh, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Juniper Networks, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
In general, techniques are described in which packet replicators of a network device cooperate to generate a distributed hierarchical forwarding structure that the packet replicators then use to replicate and forward multicast packets to multiple output interfaces. For example, packet forwarding engines (PFEs) of a router each receive a new list of interfaces for a multicast packet stream. The PFEs individually construct a hierarchical forwarding structure based on the interface list. The hierarchical forwarding structure specifies interrelationships among the PFEs, which occupy nodes within the hierarchy. Each child PFE determines from the hierarchical forwarding structure the identity of a parent PFE and issues a token, constituting forwarding state for the distributed hierarchical forwarding structure, to the parent PFE. The parent PFE uses the token to identify packets of the multicast traffic to the child PFE during replication and forwarding of multicast packets proceeding according to the hierarchical forwarding structure.