1120 results about "Line card" patented technology

A system and technique restarts a data plane of an intermediate node, such as an aggregation router, of a computer network without changing the state of a control plane in the router. The aggregation router comprises a control plane that includes a supervisor processor configured to manage traffic forwarding operations of the node. To that end, the supervisor processor maintains a current state of the control plane pertaining to, e.g., routing protocols and interface states of line cards within the router. The aggregation router further comprises a data plane that includes hardware components, such as a forwarding engine, configured to perform forwarding operations for data forwarded by the router.

Methods and apparatus to support dynamic allocation of traffic management resources in a network element. Shared pools of traffic management resources comprising an aggregation of local line card resources distributed across the line cards or a network element maintained by apparatus software. Incoming packets are classified into subscriber flows using a hierarchical classification scheme. In view of subscriber services and flow application types, traffic management resources are dynamically allocated from the shared pools, and traffic management policies associated with the subscriber services and application types are applied to the subscriber flows via the allocated resources. In response to detecting a subscriber flow has terminated, the allocated resources are release and made available to be dynamically re-allocated to subsequent subscriber flows.

An architecture for a line card in a network routing device is provided. The line card architecture provides a bi-directional interface between the routing device and a network, both receiving packets from the network and transmitting the packets to the network through one or more connecting ports. In both the receive and transmit path, packets processing and routing in a multi-stage, parallel pipeline that can operate on several packets at the same time to determine each packet's routing destination is provided. Once a routing destination determination is made, the line card architecture provides for each received packet to be modified to contain new routing information and additional header data to facilitate packet transmission through the switching fabric. The line card architecture further provides for the use of bandwidth management techniques in order to buffer and enqueue each packet for transmission through the switching fabric to a corresponding destination port. The transmit path of the line card architecture further incorporates additional features for treatment and replication of multicast packets.

A technique is described which may be used to synchronize a plurality of different access controllers which control a plurality of distinct ports at the Head End of an access network. In the context of a cable network, the technique of the present invention may be used to synchronize desired upstream and/or downstream channels across different line cards within a Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS). The technique involves utilizing a master time reference device which maintains and updates a current time reference, and periodically distributes synchronization signals to desired line cards in the system in order to synchronize these line cards. In a specific embodiment, the synchronization signals include current timestamp data generated from the master time reference device and distributed to all (or selected) line cards in the system. A slave time reference device on each of the line cards receives the periodic synchronization updates and uses the synchronization data to remain synchronized with the master time reference device. There are also provisions in this protocol to allow for hot insertion and removal of line cards, software reset or loading of the master and/or slave time reference devices, and redundant master time reference devices, including master time reference device fault detection and automatic fail over.

A method and apparatus for an application aware traffic shaping service node architecture is described. One embodiment of the invention, the service node architecture includes a set of one or more line cards, a set of one or more processor cards and a full mesh communication infrastructure coupling the sets of line and processor cards. Each link coupling the sets of line and processor cards is of equal capacity. A line card includes a physical interface and a set of one or policy network processors, with the network processors performing deep packet inspection on incoming traffic and shaping outgoing traffic. Processors cards include a set of one or more policy generating processors. According to another embodiment of the invention, the service node generates a set of statistics based on the incoming traffic and continually updates, in real-time, traffic shaping policies based on the set of statistics.

A computer network switch system is disclosed. A switch system may be configured as a single chassis system that has at least one line card, a set of active switch fabric cards to concurrently carry network traffic; and a first system control card to provide control functionality for the line card. The switch system may be configured as a multiple chassis system that has at least one line card chassis containing several line cards, and a switch fabric chassis (or a second line card chassis) that contains several switch fabric cards to provide a switching fabric with multiple ports. Load-sharing is accomplished primarily at the chip level, although card-level load-sharing is possible.

The present invention discloses an interfacing apparatus and method for adapting Ethernet directly to physical channel, which encapsulates MAC frames into SDH/SONET SPE/VC using LAPS. The LAPS encapsulation consists of the start Flag Sequence, address field (SAPI, Service Access Point Identifier), control field (0x03), Information field (Ipv4, Ipv6, or PPP protocol data unit), FCS (Frame check sequence) and the ending Flag Sequence. The Flag Sequence (0x7E) identifies the beginning/end of a LAPS frame. The present invention can be used to provide Ethernet interface in telecom SDH/SONET transmission device or provide facilities to remote access datacom device, such as core and edge routers, switch devices, IP based network accessing equipment, line cards, and interfacing units used in high speed application, e.g. Gigabit applications. By simplification of SDH/SONET, i.e. using simplified SDH/SONET, Ethernet could be applied to DWDM.

A technique efficiently and dynamically maintains bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) on a bundle of links in a computer network. According to the novel technique, one or more “standby” BFD sessions may be established on one or more corresponding line cards (LCs), the LCs having one or more links of the bundle (bundle links). Once established, one of the standby BFD sessions may be selected as an “active” BFD session based on activity of one of the bundle links of the corresponding LC. Also, BFD messages may be transmitted from one of the bundle links of the active BFD session, e.g., the link receiving BFD messages. In response to inactivity of the transmitting link (e.g., failure, removal, etc.), the active BFD session may switch to another available active bundle link, and if no other active bundle links are available to the active BFD session, one of the standby BFD sessions is selected as the new active BFD session. In the event no other standby BFD sessions exist, the link bundle is determined to have failed.

A method for distributed health monitoring and fault repairing in a switching system. The switching system having one or more supervisory cards, one or more line cards, and one or more switch fabric cards. The method includes transmitting a health status poll request message to the one or more line cards and the one or more switch fabric cards. Thereafter, the method includes receiving health status poll response messages from each of the one or more line cards and the one or more switch fabric cards. Each health status poll response message includes health status summary of the corresponding card. Further, the method involves detecting one or more faults in the switching system based on the health poll response messages. Finally, the method includes triggering at least one action on the detection of the faults in the switching system. These actions are triggered based on a set of predefined rules.

An example method is provided and includes configuring a service appliance to offload network control plane and network data plane operations to a switch; establishing a communication channel between the service appliance and the switch; and communicating control messages between the service appliance and the switch over the communication channel. In more particular embodiment, the method can include communicating data messages between the service appliance and the switch over the communication channel.

A pipelined linecard architecture for receiving, modifying, switching, buffering, queuing and dequeuing packets for transmission in a communications network. The linecard has two paths: the receive path, which carries packets into the switch device from the network, and the transmit path, which carries packets from the switch to the network. In the receive path, received packets are processed and switched in an asynchronous, multi-stage pipeline utilizing programmable data structures for fast table lookup and linked list traversal. The pipelined switch operates on several packets in parallel while determining each packet's routing destination. Once that determination is made, each packet is modified to contain new routing information as well as additional header data to help speed it through the switch. Each packet is then buffered and enqueued for transmission over the switching fabric to the linecard attached to the proper destination port. The destination linecard may be the same physical linecard as that receiving the inbound packet or a different physical linecard. The transmit path consists of a buffer/queuing circuit similar to that used in the receive path. Both enqueuing and dequeuing of packets is accomplished using CoS-based decision making apparatus and congestion avoidance and dequeue management hardware. The architecture of the present invention has the advantages of high throughput and the ability to rapidly implement new features and capabilities.

A telephony system and method having a switch for analog voice and data signals that is connected to a first network, and a router for routing Internet Protocol packets that is connected to a second network using Internet Protocol addressing. The telephony system and method also includes a telephony gateway that is connected to both the switch and the router for converting analog voice signals into Internet Protocol packets and for converting Internet Protocol packets into analog voice signals, the telephony gateway being connected, and a remote access server that is connected to both the switch and the router for converting analog data signals into Internet Protocol packets and for converting Internet Protocol packets into analog data signals. The switch may have a switch matrix capable of being connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network, a line rack with a plurality of line cards connected to the switch matrix, and a trunk rack with a plurality of trunk cards connected to the switch matrix. The switch matrix may also be connected to the telephony gateway and the remote access server.

An architecture for a line card in a network routing device is provided. The line card architecture provides a bi-directional interface between the routing device and a network, both receiving packets from the network and transmitting the packets to the network through one or more connecting ports. In both the receive and transmit path, packets processing and routing in a multi-stage, parallel pipeline that can operate on several packets at the same time to determine each packet's routing destination is provided. Once a routing destination determination is made, the line card architecture provides for each received packet to be modified to contain new routing information and additional header data to facilitate packet transmission through the switching fabric. The line card architecture further provides for the use of bandwidth management techniques in order to buffer and enqueue each packet for transmission through the switching fabric to a corresponding destination port. The transmit path of the line card architecture further incorporates additional features for treatment and replication of multicast packets.

To reduce power consumption and associated heating in a line card of line termination equipment (LTE, 12) employing multiple cub-channel carriers to communicate broadband information to customer premise equipment (CPE, 30) down a wireline communication resource (26, sub-channel carrier transmissions are restricted (58) during periods of CPE inactivity. Power supplies to a power amplifier (30) associated with the line card and wireline resource (26) are reduced, with digital signal processing capabilities of the LTE (12) further restricted (64). When the CPE wishes to re-start communication, the CPE (30) locks (68) to a correct alignment in a transmission scheme using a pilot tone that is transmitted within a simple pattern sent during reduced sub-channel carrier transmissions. Alternatively, should all transmission from the LTE cease during CPE inactivity, then the CPE monitors (80) the transmission environment and sends (82) a wake-up call to the LTE between boundaries of an uplink slot. The LTE (12) re-establishes pilot tone transmissions (86), with synchronization and lock (88) subsequently achievable by the CPE (30): this is illustrated in FIG. 2.

An access server architecture, and methods for use of the architecture to increase the scalability of and balance processor load for a network access server device, are disclosed. In this architecture, packet forwarding and packet processing are distributed amongst cards serving low-speed access lines (i.e., line cards). Thus, as the number of line cards expands, forwarding resources are expanded in at least rough proportion. The NAS route switch controller and the high-speed ports used to access the network are largely relieved of packet processing tasks for traffic passing through the server. The egress port uses a distribution engine that performs the routing lookup for packets received at the high-speed interface, tags the packets with an adjacency table pointer, and sends them to the appropriate forwarding engine for packet processing. The route switch controller, largely uninvolved in the processing of packets, updates routing information needed by each distribution or forwarding engine.

An Internet infrastructure with network devices and end point devices containing service module manager and service modules, that supports packet analysis, encapsulation and vectoring, and interleaving applications. The network device that supports packet content analysis on arriving packet, consists of a plurality of packet switched interface circuitries, user interface circuitry, local storage comprising the service module manager software and a plurality of local service modules, and processing circuitry communicatively coupled to each of the packet switched interfaces, local storage and user interface circuit. The processing circuitry executes service module manager and thus analyzes the packet content and applies one or more selected local service module processing using the packet. The processing circuitry thus takes one or more actions on the packet. A packet switching exchange that supports packet content analysis, encapsulation and vectoring on arriving packet, consisting a plurality of interconnecting switches, a plurality of line cards, general primary processing card. A client device that supports packet content analysis on arriving packet containing a plurality of network interfaces, user interface circuitry, local storage and processing circuitry communicatively coupled to each of the network interfaces, local storage and user interface circuitry.

When updating a running program in a system that uses a one-to-one backup program, fault-tolerance is lost while the backup program is itself being updated. To overcome this temporary loss of an available backup program, the number of backup copies of a software process is temporarily and dynamically increased during the software upgrade. The extra backup software processes may run on an unused processing unit or may run as an extra software process on a processing unit which is already performing a task. The technique may be applied to communication line cards.

A system and method are provided for processing storage commands between a host and a target. The system includes a first line card, a system card, and a second line card. The storage command that is issued from the host is received by the first line card. The first line card determines whether or not it can process the request by itself and, if so, forwards the storage command to the second line card for forwarding (and eventual processing) by the target. If the first line card cannot process the storage command by itself, it forwards the storage command to the system card for additional processing. The revised storage command is issued from the system card to the first line card. The first line card then issues the revised storage command to the second line card for eventual processing by the target.

A Flexible Ethernet (FlexE) switch system configured to switch a FlexE client service includes interface circuitry configured to ingress and egress a plurality of FlexE clients; and switch circuitry configured to switch portions of the FlexE clients based on 64b/66b block boundaries between the interface circuitry. A node configured to switch a Flexible Ethernet (FlexE) client service in a network includes one or more line cards configured to ingress and egress a plurality of FlexE clients; and one or more switch fabrics configured to switch portions of the FlexE clients based on 64b/66b block boundaries between the one or more line cards.

An architecture for a line card in a network routing device is provided. The line card architecture provides a bi-directional interface between the routing device and a network, both receiving packets from the network and transmitting the packets to the network through one or more connecting ports. In both the receive and transmit path, packets processing and routing in a multi-stage, parallel pipeline that can operate on several packets at the same time to determine each packet's routing destination is provided. Once a routing destination determination is made, the line card architecture provides for each received packet to be modified to contain new routing information and additional header data to facilitate packet transmission through the switching fabric. The line card architecture further provides for the use of bandwidth management techniques in order to buffer and enqueue each packet for transmission through the switching fabric to a corresponding destination port. The transmit path of the line card architecture further incorporates additional features for treatment and replication of multicast packets.