Back to results
US 2006/0114903 A1Published application
Distributed multicast system and method in a network
AssigneeEgenera, Inc.
InventorsEdward Duffy, Scott Geng, Hai Huang, Hua Qin
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention provides multicast communication using distributed topologies in a network. The control nodes in the network build a distributed topology of processor nodes for providing multicast packet distribution. Multiple processor nodes in the network participate in the decisions regarding the forwarding of multicast packets as opposed to multicast communications being centralized in the control nodes.
Claims42
A method for providing multicast distribution in a network, the method comprising:
- modeling a multicast group into a linearly chained topology having one or more chains of processor nodes in the multicast group;
- receiving a multicast packet at a control processor;
- the control processor forwarding a version of the multicast packet to a first processor in each of the one or more chains;
- and
- each of the first processors in the one or more chains forwarding the multicast packet to a subsequent processor in its respective chain and so on, until each processor in each of the one or more chains has received the multicast packet.
2 more elements
A method for implementing multicast distribution in a network having a plurality of processors, the method comprising:
- defining a topology of an Ethernet network to be emulated on a computing platform, the topology including at least one processor assigned to be at least one control node and a plurality of processors assigned to be processing nodes, the processing nodes forming one or more chains of processing nodes;
- allocating virtual interfaces over an underlying physical network to provide direct software communication from each processing node to each other processing node in the one or more chains of processors;
- the at least one control node receiving a multicast packet, said multicast packet having a multicast address identifying the multicast group of processing nodes, the at least one control node communicating the multicast packet to a first processing node of the multicast group in the one or more chains of processing nodes;
- and
- the first processing node communicating the multicast packet to a subsequent processing node of the multicast group in the one or more chains, and wherein the multicast packet is forwarded from the subsequent processing node to an adjacent processing node until each processing node of the multicast group in the one or more chains has received the multicast packet.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.