Techniques for synchronizing application object instances
Granted: July 1, 2014
Patent Number:
8769155
Techniques for synchronizing data object instances between applications/processes in an efficient manner. In one set of embodiments, the techniques described herein can be implemented in one or more network routers to synchronize data between a process running on an active management processor and a process running on a standby management processor, thereby facilitating features such as non-stop routing (NSR).
Manageability tools for lossless networks
Granted: July 1, 2014
Patent Number:
8767561
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.
Fine granularity access control for a storage area network
Granted: June 24, 2014
Patent Number:
8762552
A SAN management software program controls access to resources in the SAN by associating individual users with one or more administration domains. A user that is associated with an administration domain that includes a port of a SAN switch can configure or otherwise access the port but is restricted from accessing ports outside of that administration domain. Likewise, access to other sub-fabric resources can be restricted and allowed to individual users and users in specific roles or…
Virtual machine and application migration over local and wide area networks without timeout
Granted: June 17, 2014
Patent Number:
8756602
Long distance cloud migration (LDCM) to overcome the limitations faced by the cloud migration techniques over long distance, high speed WAN infrastructures. LDCM overcomes the negative effects of existing TCP/IP mechanisms on the efficient use of available bandwidth. LDCM also acts as an acceleration engine to optimize various hypervisor, storage and security applications.
Smoothing algorithm for round trip time (RTT) measurements
Granted: June 17, 2014
Patent Number:
8755279
A smoothing algorithm for round trip time (RTT) measurements is provided to a network device to effectively deal with variations or other potential anomalies that may occur in RTT measurements. The algorithm involves: first determining what should be considered a very high or a very small value for a RTT sample. If a new RTT sample is in an acceptable range, then the network device performs a relatively basic smoothing. If the new RTT sample is much higher than a current RTT value, then…
Redundancy support for network address translation (NAT)
Granted: June 17, 2014
Patent Number:
8755267
Stateful failover redundancy support is provided for network address translation (NAT). A master NAT device is backed-up with at least one back-up NAT device. Existing sessions are synchronized between the two NAT devices, such as via a dedicated link between them. In the event of a failover where the master NAT device is unable to perform its NAT functions, ownership of Internet protocol (IP) addresses is transferred from the master NAT device to the back-up NAT device. The back-up NAT…
Transmission buffer under-run protection
Granted: June 10, 2014
Patent Number:
8751881
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates transmission buffer under-run protection. During operation, the system stores bits of a data frame in a transmission buffer associated with an output port. The system also monitors the state of the transmission buffer and commences transmission of the data frame to the output port prior to complete reception of the data frame in the transmission buffer. The system further determines that the amount of data stored…
Congestion-adaptive compression
Granted: June 10, 2014
Patent Number:
8750370
A network device is adaptively configured to compress an output data stream, responsive to congestion in the network. The network device receives indications of network congestion from another network device. Upon receipt of a congestion indication, the network device can adapt the compression technique to attempt to achieve more or less compression, depending on whether the congestion indication indicates more or less congestion. By adapting the compression to the level of network…
FCIP communications with load sharing and failover
Granted: June 3, 2014
Patent Number:
8745243
An IP gateway device establishes distinct TCP sessions within a single FCIP tunnel, each TCP session being designated for a different priority of service (e.g., high, medium, low), plus a control stream. Each TCP session has its own TCP stack and its own settings for VLAN Tagging (IEEE 802.1Q), quality of service (IEEE 802.1P) and Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP). By distributing data streams assigned to different priorities of service into different TCP sessions within the FCIP…
Queue speed-up by using multiple linked lists
Granted: May 27, 2014
Patent Number:
8737418
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch that includes a transmission mechanism configured to transmit frames stored in a queue, and a queue management mechanism configured to store frames associated with the queue in a number of sub-queues which allow frames in different sub-queues to be retrieved independently, thereby facilitating parallel processing of the frames stored in the sub-queues.
Automatic adjustment of logical channels in a Fibre Channel network
Granted: May 27, 2014
Patent Number:
8737230
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates automatic adjustment of logical channels in a Fiber Channel (FC) network. During operation, the system receives FC data frames. A respective data frame is associated with a logical channel. The bandwidth on an FC link can be allocated into a plurality of logical channels, and a respective logical channel is associated with a dedicated buffer and can transport a plurality of data flows with data frames of variable…
Hierarchical rate color marker
Granted: May 20, 2014
Patent Number:
8730812
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 converts, within different classes of service (CoSs), an overflow high-compliance token to a medium-compliance token, in a top-down or bottom-up fashion with respect to different CoS priorities.
Side-exhaust cooling system with extensible duct for rack mounted equipment
Granted: May 20, 2014
Patent Number:
8730671
A cooling device for rack mount equipment comprises an extensible side duct, open on its inner and rear-facing sides which redirects warm exhaust air exiting vents in the side of a chassis towards the rear of an enclosure holding the chassis. An apparatus incorporating the cooling device may be installed in a rack with the extensible side duct in a retracted position. The extensible side duct may extend under the influence of air pressure, forming a plenum in fluid communication with the…
Method and apparatus for providing virtual machine information to a network interface
Granted: May 6, 2014
Patent Number:
8719069
A hypervisor preferably provides VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range information to the HBA when a VM is created. Alternatively, the HBA can determine that a LUN/LBA range is new and request VM identity, priority and LUN/LBA range from the hypervisor. The HBA creates a table containing the VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range. The HBA then detects operations directed to the LUN/LBA range and does a lookup to determine VM identification and priority. VM identification…
Methods, devices and systems with improved zone merge operation by operating on a switch basis
Granted: April 15, 2014
Patent Number:
8700799
Methods, devices and systems for improved zone merge operations are disclosed. Two connected switches are arbitrated as an initiator and a receiver. The merge operation is initiated only by the initiator on an initiator/receiver inter-switch link. The initiator may initiate a merge request and the receiver may perform the computation of the difference between the old and the new zone. Either the whole configuration or only the differences are communicated between the switches. The merges…
Method and system for facilitating quality of service in edge devices in a fibre channel network
Granted: April 15, 2014
Patent Number:
8699513
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates quality of service (QoS) in a Fiber Channel (FC) host bus adaptor (HBA). In this system the bandwidth on an FC link between the HBA and the FC switch can be allocated into a plurality of logical channels, and a respective logical channel can transport data frames of variable length. Furthermore, a respective logical channel is associated with a dedicated buffer. During operation, the HBA communicates to an FC…
Determination and display of LUN encryption paths
Granted: April 8, 2014
Patent Number:
8694768
A management station which manages the encryption devices in a SAN to set up encrypted LUNs. In setting up the encryption, the source and target ports are identified, along with the target LUN. LUN serial numbers used to identify unique LUNs. As paths to a given LUN are defined, the management station compares the path to existing paths and provides an indication if there is a mismatch in the encryption policies or keys being applied to the LUN over the various paths. This allows the…
Hardware-accelerated lossless data compression
Granted: April 8, 2014
Patent Number:
8694703
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…
Transaction and connection independent protocol load balancing
Granted: April 8, 2014
Patent Number:
8693477
A system and method for load balancing session initiation protocol (SIP) traffic based on bridging and tracking transactions and connections between frontend and backend devices. The method includes receiving a SIP message and parsing a header of the SIP message. The parsing may include selecting a transaction identifier. The method further includes accessing a transaction table based on the transaction identifier and selecting a connection for forwarding the SIP message. The SIP message…
Tunnel path MTU discovery
Granted: April 1, 2014
Patent Number:
8687653
A solution for tunnel path MTU discovery includes, at a first network device configured as an origination endpoint for a tunnel, storing a keep-alive packet having a size of an interface maximum transmission unit (MTU), the keep-alive packet indicating the packet should not be fragmented, the second network device configured as a termination endpoint for the tunnel. If the sending fails, the size of the keep-alive packet is iteratively changed to converge upon a path MTU, where the path…
