Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080259936 | SERVICE PROCESSING SWITCH - A system and method for providing IP services. A packet is received at a line interface/network module and forwarded to a virtual routing engine The virtual routing engine determines if the packet requires processing by a virtual services engine. If the packet requires processing by the virtual services engine, the packet is routed to the virtual services engine for processing. | 10-23-2008 |
20090073977 | ROUTING TRAFFIC THROUGH A VIRTUAL ROUTER-BASED NETWORK SWITCH - Methods and systems are provided for routing traffic through a virtual router-based network switch. According to one embodiment, a flow data structure is established that identifies current packet flows associated with multiple virtual routers in the virtual router-based network device. When an incoming packet is received by the virtual router-based network device, it is then determined whether the incoming packet is associated with a current packet flow by accessing the flow data structure based on a header associated with the incoming packet. If it is determined that the incoming packet is associated with the current packet flow, then the incoming packet is hardware forwarded via a network interface of the virtual router-based network device without intervention by a processor of the virtual router-based network device, otherwise the incoming packet is forwarded to software on the processor for flow learning. | 03-19-2009 |
20090225759 | HIERARCHICAL METERING IN A VIRTUAL ROUTER-BASED NETWORK SWITCH - Methods and systems are provided for applying metering and rate-limiting in a virtual router environment and supporting a hierarchy of metering/rate-limiting contexts per packet flow. According to one embodiment, multiple first level metering options and multiple second level metering options associated with a hierarchy of metering levels are provided. A virtual routing engine receives packets associated with a first packet flow and packets associated with a second packet flow. The virtual routing engine performs a first type of metering of the first level metering options on the packets associated with the first packet flow using a first metering control block (MCB) and performs a second type of metering of the second level metering options on the packets associated with the first packet flow and the packets associated with the second packet flow using a second MCB. | 09-10-2009 |
20100091025 | SEAMLESS DISPLAY MIGRATION - Exemplary embodiments of methods, apparatuses, and systems for seamlessly migrating a user visible display stream sent to a display device from one rendered display stream to another rendered display stream are described. For one embodiment, mirror video display streams are received from both a first graphics processing unit (GPU) and a second GPU, and the video display stream sent to a display device is switched from the video display stream from the first GPU to the video display stream from the second GPU, wherein the switching occurs during a blanking interval for the first GPU that overlaps with a blanking interval for the second GPU. | 04-15-2010 |
20100189016 | IDENTIFYING NODES IN A RING NETWORK - Methods, systems and data structure for facilitating identification of nodes in a ring network are provided. According to one embodiment, a data structure is stored on a computer-readable storage media of a node (e.g., a blade) participating in a ring network, within a multi-blade system, for example. The data structure includes a packet-ring master field, a control-node master field, a node characteristics field, a connection state field, a node identification field and a marker field. The packet-ring master field indicates whether the node is a current packet-ring master. The control-node master field indicates whether the node is a control-node master. The node characteristics field specifies per-node characteristics. The connection state field indicates a current connection state of the node. The node identification field specifies the node. The marker field indicates whether the data structure is a node discovery marker. | 07-29-2010 |
20100220732 | SERVICE PROCESSING SWITCH - Methods and systems for providing IP services in an integrated fashion are provided. According to one embodiment, a system includes a switch fabric and a line interface/network module, multiple virtual routing engines (VREs) and a virtual services engine (VSE) coupled with the switch fabric. The line interface/network module receives packets, steers ingress packets to a selected VRE and transmits egress packets according to their relative priority. VREs determines if a packet associated with a packet flow requires processing by the VSE by performing flow-based packet classification on the packet and evaluating forwarding state information associated with previously stored flow learning results. The VSE includes a central processing unit configured to perform firewall processing, Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filtering and anti-virus processing. If the packet is determined to require processing by the VSE, then the packet is steered to the VSE for firewall, URL filtering and/or anti-virus processing. | 09-02-2010 |
20110200044 | HARDWARE-ACCELERATED PACKET MULTICASTING IN A VIRTUAL ROUTING SYSTEM - Methods and systems are provided for hardware-accelerated packet multicasting in a virtual routing system. According to one embodiment, a virtual routing engine (VRE) including virtual routing processors and corresponding memory systems are provided. The VRE implements virtual routers (VRs) operable on the virtual routing processors and associated routing contexts utilizing potentially overlapping multicast address spaces resident in the memory systems. Multicasting of multicast flows originated by subscribers of a service provider is simultaneously performed on behalf of the subscribers. A VR is selected to handle multicast packets associated with a multicast flow. A routing context of the VRE is switched to one associated with the VR. A packet of the multicast flow is forwarded to multiple destinations by reading a portion of the packet from a common buffer for each instance of multicasting and applying transform control instructions to the packet for each instance of multicasting. | 08-18-2011 |
20120057460 | SERVICE PROCESSING SWITCH - Methods and systems for providing IP services in an integrated fashion are provided. According to one embodiment, a load associated with multiple virtual routing processing resources of an IP service generator of a virtual router (VR) based switch is monitored. Packets are load balanced among the virtual routing processing resources. A packet flow cache is maintained with packet flow entries containing information indicative of packet processing actions for established packet flows. Deep packet classification is performed to determine whether a packet is associated with an established packet flow. If so, the packet is directed to one of multiple virtual services processing resources representing application-tailored engines configured to provide network-based IP services including one or more of virtual private network (VPN) processing, firewall processing, Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filtering and anti-virus processing. If the packet is allowed, it is returned to the source virtual routing processing resource for forwarding. | 03-08-2012 |
20120069850 | NETWORK PACKET STEERING VIA CONFIGURABLE ASSOCIATION OF PACKET PROCESSING RESOURCES AND NETWORK INTERFACES - Methods and systems are provided for steering network packets. According to one embodiment, a dynamically configurable steering table is stored within a memory of each network interface of a networking routing/switching device. The steering table represents a mapping that logically assigns each of the network interfaces to one of multiple packet processing resources of the network routing/switching device. The steering table has contained therein information indicative of a unique identifier/address of the assigned packet processing resource. Responsive to receiving a packet on a network interface, the network interface performs Layer 1 or Layer 2 steering of the received packet to the assigned packet processing resource by retrieving the information indicative of the unique identifier/address of the assigned packet processing resource from the steering table based on a channel identifier associated with the received packet and the received packet is processed by the assigned packet processing resource. | 03-22-2012 |
20130022049 | IDENTIFYING NODES IN A RING NETWORK - Methods, systems and data structures for determining a token master on a ring network are provided. According to one embodiment, determining a token master on a ring network includes receiving a packet containing a network token at a first node on the network. If the network token does not arrive within a preselected timeout period, generating an arbitration token. If the packet contains an arbitration token, determining if the arbitration token was modified by a higher priority node of the network and if not, setting the first node as a token master and converting the arbitration token to a packet transmission token. Arbitration tokens are used to identify a token master that is responsible for generating a packet transmission token onto the network, whereas the packet transmission token authorizes a transmitting node that has most recently received the packet transmission token to transmit locally generated packets onto the network. | 01-24-2013 |
20130033504 | Seamless Display Migration - Exemplary embodiments of methods, apparatuses, and systems for seamlessly migrating a user visible display stream sent to a display device from one rendered display stream to another rendered display stream are described. For one embodiment, mirror video display streams are received from both a first graphics processing unit (GPU) and a second GPU, and the video display stream sent to a display device is switched from the video display stream from the first GPU to the video display stream from the second GPU, wherein the switching occurs during a blanking interval for the first GPU that overlaps with a blanking interval for the second GPU. | 02-07-2013 |
20130308460 | SERVICE PROCESSING SWITCH - Methods and systems for providing IP services in an integrated fashion are provided. According to one embodiment, packets are load balanced among virtual routing processing resources of an IP service generator of a virtual router (VR) based switch. A packet flow cache is maintained with packet flow entries containing information indicative of packet processing actions for established packet flows. Deep packet classification is performed to determine whether a packet is associated with an established packet flow. If so, the packet is directed to one of multiple virtual services processing resources representing application-tailored engines configured to provide managed firewall services. If the packet is allowed, it is returned to the source virtual routing processing resource for forwarding. | 11-21-2013 |
20140161136 | Network Packet Steering via Configurable Association of Packet Processing Resources and Network Interfaces - Methods and systems are provided for steering network packets. According to one embodiment, a dynamically configurable steering table is stored within a memory of each network interface of a networking routing/switching device. The steering table represents a mapping that logically assigns each of the network interfaces to one of multiple packet processing resources of the network routing/switching device. The steering table has contained therein information indicative of a unique identifier/address of the assigned packet processing resource. Responsive to receiving a packet on a network interface, the network interface performs Layer 1 or Layer 2 steering of the received packet to the assigned packet processing resource by retrieving the information indicative of the unique identifier/address of the assigned packet processing resource from the steering table based on a channel identifier associated with the received packet and the received packet is processed by the assigned packet processing resource. | 06-12-2014 |
20140177631 | HARDWARE-ACCELERATED PACKET MULTICASTING - Methods and systems for hardware-accelerated packet multicasting are provided. According to one embodiment, a multicast packet is received at an ingress system of a packet-forwarding engine (PFE). Multiple flow classification indices are identified for the multicast packet by the ingress system. The multiple flow classification indices are sent to an egress system of the PFE by the ingress system. A single copy of the multicast packet is buffered in a memory accessible by the egress system. Corresponding transform control instructions are identified by the egress system based on each flow classification index. The single copy of the multicast packet is read from the memory. The multicast packet is transformed to an outgoing packet for each instance of the multicast packet based on the corresponding transform control instructions. The outgoing packet is transmitted for routing to a network. | 06-26-2014 |