US 10,855,570 B2Granted

Selectively forwarding flow of packets in a network appliance

AssigneeGigamon Inc.

InventorsAyyappa Nuthalapati, Bhanu Prathap Reddy Parlapalli, Andrew Mao, Qi Ming Ng

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A network appliance described herein allows the user to selectively forward the flow of packets received through a network port, to a particular egress port. The network appliance creates virtual ports, which can be assigned to the one or more egress ports. The network appliance assigns the flow of packets to the one or more virtual ports in the network appliance. The network appliance decides a forwarding treatment to be applied to the flow of packets, for forwarding the flow of packets to the egress tool ports, based on the virtual port to which the flow of packets is assigned and based on a detected network characteristic. The forwarding treatment can be a decision to drop the flow of packets, or to send the flow of packets to the egress port assigned to the virtual port.

Claims21

Dependent claims

An apparatus comprising:

a network port through which to receive a flow of packets from a source external to the apparatus;
a plurality of egress tool ports through which to output the flow of packets from the apparatus to a tool external to the apparatus;
and
a processor configured to:
create a plurality of virtual ports in the apparatus;
preserve a unity of the flow of packets by:
assigning each packet in the flow of packets to the same virtual port of the plurality of virtual ports in the apparatus;
and
maintaining the unity of the flow of packets by deciding a same forwarding treatment to be applied to each packet in the flow of packets, wherein the deciding includes choosing between dropping the flow of packets and forwarding the flow of packets to an egress tool port of the apparatus, based on the virtual port to which the flow of packets is assigned and based on a detected network characteristic including a state of the egress tool port.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 16/123,856Filed 6 Sep 2018 · continuation
Priority: 21 Nov 2016
Published: US 2019/0020564 A117 Jan 2019
Granted: 1 Dec 2020
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification8 codes

H04L 43/12
Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks: network monitoring probes
H04L 43/026
Capturing of monitoring data: using flow identification
H04L 43/0894
Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level: packet rate
H04L 45/7453
Address table lookup; Address filtering: using hashing

Family

Application15/358,096Parent of this continuation · filed 21 Nov 2016
US 2019/0020564 A1Pre-grant publication · published 17 Jan 2019
US 10,103,963 B2Parent of this continuation
US 2018/0145897 A1Published application
US 10,855,570 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.