US 2026/0292705 A1Published application

Assessing and enforcing module compatibility in a modular network switch system

AssigneeArista Networks, Inc.

InventorsMpho Mbotho, Cooper Harasyn, Justin Oliver, Aaron Payment

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A modular network switch performs a compatibility assessment to enforce compatibility between installed modules. Upon startup or upon detecting insertion of a new module, a supervisor module obtains respective module identifiers for the set of installed modules. The supervisor module performs, based on the compatibility information and the respective module identifiers, a compatibility assessment between the set of modules to detect a compatible module set. The supervisor module then sends a control signal to disable power to switching components of one or more incompatible modules and enable power to switching components of modules in the compatible module set. A similar compatibility assessment may be performed in a network switch device of a switch aggregation group (SWAG) to assess and enforce compatibility with respect to the set of devices in the SWAG.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A modular network switch comprising:

a chassis including a power supply, a power distribution system for distributing power from the power supply to a plurality of module slots, and a data interconnect for communicatively coupling the plurality of module slots;
a set of modules inserted in the plurality of module slots, the set of modules including:
a plurality of line card modules to perform processing of network traffic communicated via external connections;
at least one fabric module to facilitate internal data transfers between the plurality of line card modules;
and
at least one supervising module to provide control and management for the plurality of line card modules and the at least one fabric module, the at least one supervising module including:
a processor;
and
a storage medium to store compatibility information associated with a set of module identifiers, and to store instructions executable by the processor for enforcing compatibility between the set of modules, the instructions when executed causing the processor to perform steps including:
obtaining respective module identifiers for the set of modules;
performing, based on the compatibility information and the respective module identifiers for the set of modules, a compatibility assessment between the set of modules to detect a compatible module set of the set of modules;
and
sending a power control signal to disable power to switching components of one or more incompatible modules absent from the compatible module set.

10 more elements

A method for operating a modular network switch, the method comprising:

detecting a system power on or restart event of the modular network switch;
obtaining respective module identifiers for a set of modules installed in the modular network switch;
initializing an initial module identifier list to include all of the respective module identifiers;
performing, based on compatibility information, a compatibility assessment between the respective module identifiers to detect one or more incompatibilities in the set of modules;
iteratively performing, in priority order based on a priority list, updates to the initial module identifier list to generate a compatible module identifier list that includes only mutually compatible modules;
storing the compatible module identifier list;
and
sending a control signal to enable power to switching components of modules in the compatible module identifier list and disable power to switching components of modules excluded from the compatible module identifier list.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.