| Force10 Networks, Inc. Patent applications |
| Patent application number | Title | Published |
|---|
| 20120063299 | HIGHLY AVAILABLE VIRTUAL PACKET NETWORK DEVICE - A virtual chassis includes two or more physical chassis and operates as a single, logical device. Each of the two or more physical chassis include two route processor modules (RPM) and each RPM is assigned a first and a second role within the virtual chassis. The first role is a physical chassis level role and the second role is a virtual chassis level role. The RPMs operate in coordination such that the failure of any one of the RPMs results in one or more other RPMs taking over the first and second roles of the failed RPM. | 03-15-2012 |
| 20120039335 | MULTICAST PACKET FORWARDING USING MULTIPLE STACKED CHASSIS - A stacked chassis comprising multiple physical switch/router chassis operates without any special stacking hardware or stacking channels. Instead, a stacking LAG is installed between front-end switch ports on the stacked chassis. The chassis controllers negotiate a master, which controls operation of all chassis in the stack. A stacked-chassis-wide port numbering scheme is used to distribute information to all line cards in the system. Each line card processes the information to distill physical-chassis significant information for operation of that chassis in the stack. | 02-16-2012 |
| 20120033760 | EXTENDED NON-RETURN-TO-ZERO SERIAL CHANNEL SIGNALING - Methods and apparatus for serial channel operation are disclosed. An N+1-level signaling scheme is used to transmit N staggered but overlapping NRZ sub-sequences concurrently on a serial channel. Each sequence has a bit rate R and an essential bandwidth of R Hz. The combined bit rate of the channel is N×R, but due to a lack of correlation between the sub-sequences, the essential bandwidth remains approximately R Hz. The signaling scheme also contains redundancy that allows some errors to be detected and/or corrected. Other embodiments are also described and claimed. | 02-09-2012 |
| 20120020373 | PACKET FORWARDING USING MULTIPLE STACKED CHASSIS - A stacked chassis comprising multiple physical switch/router chassis operates without any special stacking hardware or stacking channels. Instead, a stacking LAG is installed between front-end switch ports on the stacked chassis. The chassis controllers negotiate a master, which controls operation of all chassis in the stack. A stacked-chassis-wide port numbering scheme is used to distribute information to all line cards in the system. Each line card processes the information to distill physical-chassis significant information for operation of that chassis in the stack. | 01-26-2012 |
| 20120020364 | BORDER GATEWAY PROTOCOL INBOUND POLICY OPTIMIZATION - A BGP capable packet network device is located at the boundary of an autonomous network and in communication with a peer BGP capable packet network device in a neighboring autonomous network. The BGP capable packet network device is comprised of one or more line cards for receiving and, processing and sending packets of information, and for receiving and forwarding routing update information to a route processor comprising the packet network device. The route processor runs a border gateway protocol which is configured with one or more policies that operate to filter the routing update information received from the line card. The routing update information filter is comprised of at least one variable length path attribute and the filter operates such that it only applies the variable length path attribute one time to the routing update information. | 01-26-2012 |
| 20110283108 | METHOD & APPARATUS FOR ESTABLISHING A TRUSTED AND SECURE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO PARTIES CONNECTED TO A NETWORK - A trusted relationship service includes a certificate authentication server and a secure file host. The certificate authentication server operates to receive requests from a supplier and a customer to register with the service, verifies the identities of the supplier and the customer and sends digital certificates to both the supplier and the customer. The supplier can send information to the trusted relationship service where it is posted in a secure file host. The supplier can solicit the customer to visit the trusted relationship service web site to view the supplier information stored there, whereupon the customer can use their digital certificate to access the trusted relationship service site and is granted permission by the site to view the supplier information. | 11-17-2011 |
| 20110088842 | DIFFERENTIAL TRACE PROFILE FOR PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARDS - Circuit boards and methods for their manufacture are disclosed. The circuit boards carry high-speed signals using conductors formed to include lengthwise channels. The channels increase the surface area of the conductors, and therefore enhance the ability of the conductors to carry high-speed signals. In at least some embodiments, a discontinuity also exists between the dielectric constant within the channels and just outside the channels, which is believed to reduce signal loss into the dielectric material. | 04-21-2011 |
| 20090107710 | Differential trace profile for printed circult boards - Circuit boards and methods for their manufacture are disclosed. The circuit boards carry high-speed signals using conductors formed to include lengthwise channels. The channels increase the surface area of the conductors, and therefore enhance the ability of the conductors to carry high-speed signals. In at least some embodiments, a discontinuity also exists between the dielectric constant within the channels and just outside the channels, which is believed to reduce signal loss into the dielectric material. | 04-30-2009 |
| 20090034728 | Multiplexed multilane hybrid scrambled transmission coding - In one embodiment, a hybrid backplane coding scheme transmits data using lengthy sequences of scrambled data, separated by 8b/10b control character sequences that prepare the receiver for the next scrambled sequence and permit realignment if necessary. Several lanes are coded separately in this manner, and then multiplexed on a common channel. Alignment sequences in the control character sequences, as well as scrambler seeds, are set to avoid synchronization of patterns generated among all lanes, which would tend to confuse a receiving serdes and/or phase-locked loop that recovers timing from the multiplexed scrambled signals. | 02-05-2009 |
| 20080285248 | High-speed router with backplane using tuned-impedance thru-holes and vias - A high-speed router backplane is disclosed. The router backplane uses differential signal pairs on multiple signal layers, each sandwiched between a pair of digital ground layers. To reduce routing complexity, at least some of the differential signal pairs route through a via pair, somewhere along their path, to a different signal layer. Specific via designs reduce differential signal distortion due to the via pair, allowing the backplane to operate reliably at differential signal rates in excess of 3 Gigabits per second. In particular, each via passes through nonfunctional conductive pads on selected digital ground plane layers, the pads separated from the remainder of its ground plane layer by a clearance, thereby modifying the impedance of the via and reducing reflections from the stubs created by the via. | 11-20-2008 |
