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OwnerWilliam C. Terrell, Tracy Edmonds +8inventors
InventorsWilliam C. Terrell, Tracy Edmonds, Wayland Jeong, Eric Russell Peterson, Jean Kodama, Harun Muliadi, Norman Chan, Rexford Hill, Michael Nishimura, Stephen How
Estimating the term…
A router for use in a network includes a scalable architecture and performs methods for implementing quality of service on a logical unit behind a network port; and for implementing storage virtualization. The architecture includes a managing processor, a supervising processor; and a plurality of routing processors coupled to a fabric. The managing processor has an in-band link to a routing processor. A routing processor receives a frame from the network, determines by parsing the frame, the protocol and logical unit number, and routes the frame to a queue according to a traffic class associated with the logical unit number in routing information prepared for the processors. An arbitration scheme empties the queue in accordance with a deficit round robin technique. If a routing processor detects the frame's destination is a virtual entity, and so is part of a virtual transaction, the router conducts a nonvirtual transaction in concert with the virtual transaction. The nonvirtual transaction accomplishes the intent of the virtual transaction but operates on an actual network port, for example, a storage device.
A method performed by a router for routing frames in a network, the router comprising a managing processor for performing a proxy process;
A method performed by a router for routing frames in a network, the router comprising a managing processor for performing a proxy process;
A method performed by a router for routing frames in a network the router comprising a managing processor for performing a proxy process;
A method performed by a router for routing frames in a network the router comprising a managing processor;
A method performed by a router for routing frames in a network the router comprising a managing processor;
A router for routing frames in a network, the router comprising:
A router for routing frames in a network, the router comprising:
A router for routing frames in a network the router comprising:
A router for routing frames in a network, the router comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
Backward citations are indexed for grants only.
Packet switching elements: buffering arrangements
Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks: routing of multiclass traffic
Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks: flow based routing
Association of routers: of virtual routers
Term end not estimated
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This application is a divisional patent application of and claims priority to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/120,266, filed on Oct. 18, 2001, by William C. Terrell, et al.
Embodiments of the present invention relate to improved networks having routers that perform routing functions and to methods for routing network traffic.
In a conventional network, data is transferred between computers and peripherals to accomplish the data processing demands of the computers and peripherals. Demands for data to be transferred via the network may arise in any particular computer or peripheral in a manner unsynchronized with demands that arise on other computers and peripherals of the network. Data transfer to accomplish delivery is generally between respective ports of the computers and peripherals and may pass through switches having ports as well. Such switches have numerous ports and generally retransmit data (also called routing network traffic) from one port to another according to address information associated with the data to be transferred. A pair of ports communicate via a link between the ports.
Embodiments of the present invention will now be further described with reference to the drawing, wherein like designations denote like elements, and:
FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of a system according to various aspects of the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a data flow diagram of processes in the system of FIG. 1;
A system according to various aspects of the present invention may include any computing environment supporting transfer of data among computer systems via a communication network. Such a system, in one implementation, provides more efficient non-blocking delivery of data, improved utilization of bandwidth, a facility for managing network traffic flows, subflows, and virtual flows, and higher quality of service. Data may be transferred between application programs being executed by one or more of the computer systems, between an application program and a data storage device, or between one or more data storage devices.
The network may be understood as a graph or a tree having network nodes. A communication network of the present invention includes at least one computer system at each of several network nodes. Each network node is coupled by a link from time to time for communication with other network nodes. Each link includes conventional computer communication technology at the physical layer and primitive layers of the type including, for example, local area, wide area, dedicated telephone, wireless, and satellite services and including conventional data communication hardware and software at each network node. The popular computer networks known as storage area networks, intranets, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the National Information Infrastructure are examples of communication networks in which various aspects of the present invention may be practiced. Network nodes are generally at physically separate locations and are generally suitably identified, for example, by a node name, node identifier, node address, a world wide identifier (WWPN), a uniform resource locator (URL), a name from a domain name system (DNS), or an Internet Protocol address (IP).
Data transfer at the lowest level occurs via a link between ports, nominally a requesting port and a participating port, where a requesting port requests a data transfer and the participating port either supplies the data (e.g., a read) or receives the data being transferred (e.g., a write). A port includes a physical implementation for common signaling between ports (e.g., any circuitry suitable for the transfer media); and a logical implementation (e.g., any combination of firmware and software). Cooperation between ports occurs in accordance with a physical protocol (e.g., signals and their characteristics) and a logical protocol (e.g., one or more layers of application program interfaces). The physical and logical implementations and protocols together constitute a port by which other software can manage, among other things, how to obtain the data to be supplied to the port and what to do with the data obtained from the port. A port may communicate using several protocols. Frames according to a first protocol may be encapsulated (i.e., become the payload) in frames according to another protocol. Ports of a router according to various aspects of the present invention may support, for example, combinations of Fibre Channel (FC) Protocol (FCP), Internet Protocol (IP), based IEEE 802.3 Ethernet protocol, Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) Parallel Interface, Serial Bus Protocol, IEEE 1384 (Fire wire), SSA SCSI-3 Protocol, Scheduled Transfer, and Virtual Interface (VI).