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AssigneeBroadcom Corporation
InventorsDavid M. Pullen, Richard Schwartz, Kevin E. O'Neal, John McQueen
Estimating the term…
A system and method for processing information transport elements, such as ethernet packets, at interfaces to a forwarder. Modules that implement processing logic are allocated per interface and per direction (i.e., inbound or outbound). At any given interface, a series of modules would be used to process inbound packets; likewise, a set of modules would be used to process outbound packets. For inbound packets, the modules allocated for inbound processing are executed when the packet is received from the interface, before sending the packet on to the forwarder. For packets that are outbound from the forwarder, the modules allocated for outbound processing are applied when the packet is sent by the forwarder, prior to any other processing, e.g., queuing to hardware. To assign modules to different interfaces at a forwarder, a registration process is performed during the system start-up process, or dynamically at runtime. For any given interface and direction, modules can be prioritized, so that a packet is processed sequentially in a specific order, one module after the other.
A method of processing an inbound packet at an interface to a forwarder, comprising the steps of:
A method of processing an outbound packet at an interface to a forwarder, comprising the steps of:
A system for processing an inbound packet at an interface to a forwarder, comprising a sequence of one or more processing modules that receives the packet from the interface, such that said modules process the packet in turn until one of said modules in said sequence discards or consumes the packet, or until said sequence finishes.
A system for processing an outbound packet at an interface to a forwarder, comprising a sequence of one or more processing modules that receives the packet from the forwarder, such that said modules process the packet in turn until one of said modules in said sequence discards or consumes the packet, or until said sequence finishes.
A method of registering the processing modules with interfaces at a forwarder, comprising:
A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied in said medium for causing an application program to execute on a computer that processes an inbound packet at an interface to a forwarder, said computer readable program code means comprising:
A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied in said medium for causing an application program to execute on a computer that processes an outbound packet at an interface to a forwarder, said computer readable program code means comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.