CONGESTION NOTIFICATION ACROSS MULTIPLE LAYER-2 DOMAINS
Granted: March 15, 2012
Application Number:
20120063316
One embodiment of the present invention provides a congestion notification. During operation, the system receives a congestion notification message with a destination layer-2 address set as the receiving mechanism's layer-2 address. The system modifies a destination layer-2 address, a source layer-2 address, and optionally a VLAN identifier of the congestion notification message, and forwards the modified congestion notification message.
Manageability Tools for Lossless Networks
Granted: March 15, 2012
Application Number:
20120063329
Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks.
Manageability Tools for Lossless Networks
Granted: March 15, 2012
Application Number:
20120063333
Manageability tools are provided for allowing an administrator to have better control over switches in a lossless network of switches. These tools provide the ability to detect slow drain and congestion bottlenecks, detect stuck virtual channels and loss of credits, while hold times on edge ASICs to be different from hold times encore ASICs, and mitigate severe latency bottlenecks.
DISASTER RECOVERY
Granted: March 8, 2012
Application Number:
20120060050
File system disaster recovery techniques provide automated monitoring, failure detection and multi-step failover from a primary designated target to one of a designated group of secondary designated targets. Secondary designated targets may be prioritized so that failover occurs in a prescribed sequence. Replication of information between the primary designated target and the secondary designated targets allows failover in a manner that maximizes continuity of operation. In addition,…
Diagnostic Port for Inter-Switch Link Testing in Electrical, Optical and Remote Loopback Modes
Granted: March 1, 2012
Application Number:
20120051738
A diagnostic testing utility is used to perform single link diagnostics tests including an electrical loopback test, an optical loopback test, a link traffic test, and a link distance measurement test. To perform the diagnostic tests, two ports at each end of a link are identified and then statically configured by a user. The ports will be configured as D_Ports and as such will be isolated from the fabric with no data traffic flowing through them. The ports will then be used to send test…
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ROUTING BETWEEN FIBRE CHANNEL FABRICS
Granted: February 23, 2012
Application Number:
20120044934
An interfabric link between two separate Fibre Channel fabrics so that devices in one fabric can communicate with devices in another fabric without requiring the merger of the two fabrics. The interfabric switch performs a conversion or a translation of device addresses in each fabric so that they are accessible to the other fabric. In a first embodiment the external ports of the interfabric switch are configured as E_ports. A series of internal ports in each interfabric switch are…
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ROUTING BETWEEN FIBRE CHANNEL FABRICS
Granted: February 23, 2012
Application Number:
20120044933
An interfabric link between two separate Fibre Channel fabrics so that devices in one fabric can communicate with devices in another fabric without requiring the merger of the two fabrics. The interfabric switch performs a conversion or a translation of device addresses in each fabric so that they are accessible to the other fabric. In a first embodiment the external ports of the interfabric switch are configured as E_ports. A series of internal ports in each interfabric switch are…
NETWORK MERGE TESTING
Granted: February 2, 2012
Application Number:
20120030321
A method and system for performing network merge testing are disclosed. In one embodiment, the network merge testing method comprises: (i) gathering configuration information from at least two networks; (ii) comparing the configuration information; and (iii) displaying a report that indicates whether an attempted merge of the at least two networks would succeed. The report preferably identifies conflicts between the network configurations, and the method may further include automatic or…
PERSISTING DATA ACROSS WARM BOOTS
Granted: January 26, 2012
Application Number:
20120023319
Techniques for persisting data stored in volatile memory across a warm boot. One or more portions (referred to as “warm memory”) of volatile memory of the system can be reserved and configured such that the data stored by these portions is not affected by a warm boot thereby resulting in the data stored being persisted across a warm boot.
ACHIEVING ULTRA-HIGH AVAILABILITY USING A SINGLE CPU
Granted: January 26, 2012
Application Number:
20120023309
Techniques for achieving high-availability using a single processor (CPU). In a system comprising a multi-core processor, at least two partitions may be configured with each partition being allocated one or more cores of the multiple cores. The partitions may be configured such that one partition operates in active mode while another partition operates in standby mode. In this manner, a single processor is able to provide active-standby functionality, thereby enhancing the availability…
Longest Prefix Match Using Binary Search Tree
Granted: January 26, 2012
Application Number:
20120023082
Longest Prefix Match (LPM) is implemented using a binary tree based search algorithm. Masked entries are stored in a plurality of binary search engines, wherein each of the binary search engines stores masked entries of a corresponding mask length. A search value is applied to each of the binary search engines in parallel. The search value is masked within each of the binary search engines, thereby creating a plurality of masked search values, each having a masked length equal to the…
CONFIGURATION ORCHESTRATION
Granted: January 19, 2012
Application Number:
20120016973
One embodiment of the present invention provides a network device that facilitates configuration orchestration. During operation, the system interprets a configuration command and stores a data structure representing a set of business logic. The business logic can be triggered by the configuration command, a local condition, or both. Furthermore, the system configures the switch according to an outcome of the business logic.
Isolation Switch for Fibre Channel Fabrics in Storage Area Networks
Granted: January 12, 2012
Application Number:
20120011297
An isolation switch blade Fibre Channel switch presents F_ports to form a first Fibre Channel fabric and N_ports to a second Fibre Channel fabric to appear as node devices. The isolation switch blade may be used to connect a plurality of blade servers to a Fibre Channel fabric. Fabric events engendered by the insertion or removal of hot-pluggable devices are handled by the isolation switch blade and “event storms” on the Fibre Channel fabric are avoided. The isolation switch blade…
COOKIE INVALIDATION OR EXPIRATION BY A SWITCH
Granted: January 12, 2012
Application Number:
20120011246
A switch may be used to force the expiration of a cookie on a user's system by inserting an expiration field into the cookie contained in a network response packet. Additionally, a mechanism is provided to delete or damage a cookie contained in a network request packet, so that server software is not disrupted by the receipt of a cookie. Deleting a cookie results in a cleaner request, but damaging a cookie may be more efficient in certain circumstances. By providing these features, an…
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING NETWORK ROUTE REDUNDANCY ACROSS LAYER 2 DEVICES
Granted: January 12, 2012
Application Number:
20120008635
Systems and methods are described for providing network route redundancy through Layer 2 devices, such as a loop free Layer 2 network having a plurality of switching devices. A virtual switch is coupled to the loop free Layer 2 network, the virtual switch having two or more switches configured to transition between master and backup modes to provide redundant support for the loop free Layer 2 network, the switches communicating their status through use of a plurality of redundancy…
Hardware-Accelerated Lossless Data Compression
Granted: December 15, 2011
Application Number:
20110307659
Systems for hardware-accelerated lossless data compression are described. At least some embodiments include data compression apparatus that includes a plurality of hash memories each associated with a different lane of a plurality of lanes (each lane including data bytes of a data unit being received by the compression apparatus), an array including array elements each including a plurality of validity bits (each validity bit within an array element corresponding to a different lane of…
Inline Wire Speed Deduplication System
Granted: December 15, 2011
Application Number:
20110307447
Systems for performing inline wire speed data deduplication are described herein. Some embodiments include a device for inline data deduplication that includes one or more input ports for receiving an input data stream containing duplicates, one or more output ports for providing a data deduplicated output data stream, and an inline data deduplication engine coupled to said one or more input ports and said one or more output ports to process input data containing duplicates into output…
TRANSPARENT CONDUCTING OXIDE FOR PHOTOVOLTAIC DEVICES
Granted: December 15, 2011
Application Number:
20110303278
One embodiment of the present invention provides a solar cell. The solar cell includes a Si base layer, a passivation layer situated above the Si base layer, a layer of heavily doped amorphous Si (a-Si) situated above the passivation layer, a first transparent-conducting-oxide (TCO) layer situated above the heavily doped a-Si layer, a back-side electrode situated below the Si base layer, and a front-side electrode situated above the first TCO layer. The first TCO layer comprises at least…
ADVANCED LINK TRACKING FOR VIRTUAL CLUSTER SWITCHING
Granted: December 8, 2011
Application Number:
20110299402
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch system. The switch includes a port that couples to a server hosting a number of virtual machines. The switch also includes a link tracking module. During operation, the link tracking module determines that reachability to at least one end host coupled to a virtual cluster switch of which the switch is a member is disrupted. The link tracking module then determines that at least one virtual machine coupled to the port is affected…
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT FOR VIRTUAL CLUSTER SWITCHING
Granted: December 8, 2011
Application Number:
20110299391
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch system. The switch includes one or more ports on the switch configured to transmit packets encapsulated based on a first protocol. The switch further includes a traffic management mechanism and a control mechanism. During operation, the control mechanism forms a logical switch based on a second protocol, receives an automatically assigned identifier for the logical switch without requiring manual configuration of the identifier,…
