REDUNDANT HOST CONNECTION IN A ROUTED NETWORK
Granted: September 30, 2010
Application Number:
20100246388
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a management mechanism and a configuration mechanism. During operation, the management mechanism is configured to operate the switch in conjunction with the partner switch as a single logical switch. The configuration mechanism is configured to assign a virtual switch identifier to the logical switch.
FLOW CONTROL FOR MULTI-HOP NETWORKS
Granted: September 23, 2010
Application Number:
20100238804
Solutions are provided that allow a network device to apply flow control on the MAC layer while taking into account the priority of the frame of traffic. This may be accomplished by generating a frame indicating that traffic flow should be paused, while utilizing a new opcode value, or alternatively by utilizing a new type/length value (possibly combined with a new opcode value). A receiving device may then examine the fields of the frame to determine whether it should it should use…
METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR INTELLIGENTLY FORWARDING MULTICAST PACKETS
Granted: September 23, 2010
Application Number:
20100238927
A routing system utilizes a layer 2 switch interconnecting several routers to intelligently forward multicast packets throughout an interne exchange carrying multicast content. The layer 2 switch performs protocol snooping to extract a lookup key that is based on network layer protocol information. The lookup key is uniquely formulated to support either shared or explicit source distribution trees. The lookup key is used to query a forwarding memory that returns an outgoing port index.…
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING VIRTUAL PORTS WITH ATTACHED VIRTUAL DEVICES IN A STORAGE AREA NETWORK
Granted: September 16, 2010
Application Number:
20100232450
Systems particularly a virtualization switch or a storage device, which include virtual ports connected to virtual devices with virtual worldwide names and virtual LUNs. Because Fibre Channel environment hosts can track worldwide names from one port to another and allow continuity in that regard, the virtual worldwide names are provided with relevant virtual LUNs and connected these to virtual ports so that the virtual devices can be moved as desired to overcome failures or to allow load…
Interface Switch for use with Fibre Channel Fabrics in Storage Area Networks
Granted: September 16, 2010
Application Number:
20100232793
An interface switch which presents itself as switch to an enterprise fabric formed of the devices from the same manufacturer as the interface switch and that of a host or node to an enterprise fabric from a different manufacturer. This allows each enterprise fabric to remain in a higher performance operating mode. The multiplexing of multiple streams of traffic between the N_ports on the first enterprise fabric and the second enterprise fabric is accomplished by N_port Virtualization.…
Use of Server Instances and Processing Elements to Define a Server
Granted: September 16, 2010
Application Number:
20100235442
A server instance, which is a collection of LUNs, containing an operating system, any applications and data storage. A processing element is the physical hardware. The combination is a server as normally understood. Templates are used to define server instances and server types to simplify deploying a server instance to a processing element. A graphical user interface provides the templates where the particular storage groups are identified and then server instances are created from…
CONNECTION RATE LIMITING FOR SERVER LOAD BALANCING AND TRANSPARENT CACHE SWITCHING
Granted: September 16, 2010
Application Number:
20100235507
Each service in a computer network may have a connection rate limit. The number of new connections per time period may be limited by using a series of rules. In a specific embodiment of the present invention, a counter is increased each time a server is selected to handle a connection request. For each service, connections coming in are tracked. Therefore, the source of connection-request packets need not be examined. Only the destination service is important. This saves significant time…
COOKIE INVALIDATION OR EXPIRATION BY A SWITCH
Granted: September 9, 2010
Application Number:
20100226367
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…
Multifabric Communication Using a Backbone Fabric
Granted: September 2, 2010
Application Number:
20100220734
A Fibre Channel router used to join fabrics. EX_ports are used to connect to the fabrics. The EX_port joins the fabric but the router will not merge into the fabric. Ports in the Fibre Channel router can be in a fabric, but other ports can be connected to other fabrics. Fibre Channel routers can be interconnected using a backbone fabric. Global, interfabric and encapsulation headers are developed to allow routing by conventional Fibre Channel switch devices in the backbone fabric and…
MULTIPLE TIERED NETWORK SECURITY SYSTEM, METHOD AND APPARATUS USING DYNAMIC USER POLICY ASSIGNMENT
Granted: September 2, 2010
Application Number:
20100223654
A multiple key, multiple tiered network security system, method and apparatus provides at least three levels of security. The first level of security includes physical (MAC) address authentication of a user device being attached to the network, such as a user device being attached to a port of a network access device. The second level includes authentication of the user of the user device, such as user authentication in accordance with the IEEE 802.1x standard. The third level includes…
HIGH AVAILABILITY AND MULTIPATHING FOR FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNET
Granted: August 26, 2010
Application Number:
20100214950
A physical Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch defines a multipath virtual FCoE switch to provide uninterrupted storage access between N_PORTs of an FCoE host and a Fibre Channel (FC) storage target, for example, in response to an F_PORT failure. Through the multipath virtual FCoE switch, the fabric is configured with multiple physical paths available between the FCoE hosts and FC targets. The multipath virtual FCoE switch is defined between or among multiple physical FCoE switches…
DYNAMIC RATE LIMITING ADJUSTMENT
Granted: August 19, 2010
Application Number:
20100208589
Dynamic rate limiting adjustment may be provided by sampling actual output rates from a rate limited device and utilizing this information to modify configured traffic limits. This allows the device to achieve actual output rates much closer to the desired rate limits for users and services.
NETWORK CONGESTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND METHODS
Granted: August 12, 2010
Application Number:
20100202294
Systems, methods and software useful for overcoming network congestion problems including head-of-line blocking issues and other network congestion problems. In certain aspects, flow control mechanisms implemented in a switch device or other network device manage buffer and system level resources using a scheduler to control the amount of data requested from a local SAN fabric. Switches and other network devices configured according to the present invention monitor each individual SCSI…
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING BANDWIDTH-CONSUMING FRAME FLOWS IN A NETWORK
Granted: August 12, 2010
Application Number:
20100202319
A port monitor monitors network traffic that passes through a port of a switch. Frame flows routed through the switch are counted by hardware frame counting logic, which includes a content-addressable memory (CAM) and counters corresponding to various frame flows. Port monitor software includes logical containers (“buckets”), which are used to record and sort counts of the frame flows from hardware based on activity of the frame flows. Frame flow sorting is based on confidence…
TOPOLOGY DATABASE SYNCHRONIZATION
Granted: July 22, 2010
Application Number:
20100182936
A network comprises a plurality of interconnected switches that implement a topology database synchronization technique in which each switch determines whether its topology database has already been transmitted to a neighboring switch when a new link is formed to the neighboring switch. When a new electrical connection is detected, the local switch determines whether any of its other ports have already been connected to the same neighboring switch. If no other port on the local switch…
SIMPLIFIED RDMA OVER ETHERNET AND FIBRE CHANNEL
Granted: July 22, 2010
Application Number:
20100183024
A new transport protocol between the IP layer and the DDP layer for use with RDMA operations. The embodiments all operate on a CEE-compliant layer 2 Ethernet network to allow the new transport protocol to be simplified, providing higher performance and simpler implementation. The new protocol allows a CEE-compliant layer 2 Ethernet network to provide data networking using IP, storage using FCoE, and RDMA using IP and the new transport protocol, without suffering the previous performance…
HIERARCHICAL RATE COLOR MARKER
Granted: July 15, 2010
Application Number:
20100177635
One embodiment provides a system that facilitates bandwidth-profile enforcement. During operation, the system indicates a packet's compliance with a bandwidth profile based at least on available high-compliance tokens and medium-compliance tokens. The system further accounts for overflow tokens from a respective class of service (CoS) and distribute an overflow token to another CoS priority level based on the overflow token's CoS information.
Isolation Switch for Fibre Channel Fabrics in Storage Area Networks
Granted: July 1, 2010
Application Number:
20100166422
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…
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR END-TO-END BEACONING
Granted: April 29, 2010
Application Number:
20100104238
An embodiment of a method includes generating a command configured to cause activation of local beaconing at a selected device, and transmitting the command to the selected device. An embodiment of a system includes a processor, a memory including instructions executable by the processor, wherein the instructions cause the processor to generate a command configured to cause a selected device to activate local beaconing, a port connected to the selected device, and a transmitter operable…
FRAME TRAFFIC BALANCING ACROSS TRUNK GROUPS
Granted: April 15, 2010
Application Number:
20100091780
Embodiments of methods, apparatuses and/or systems for logical ports in trunking are disclosed. For example, a method of routing a flow of frames may include applying a correspondence between logical ports and physical ports of a switch.
