US 6,205,146 B1 · Method of dynamically routing to a well known address in a network

Abstract

A method of determining an efficient route to a well known address that is particularly applicable to networks that do not have the capability of source routing for calculating routes to specific addresses such as ATM networks based on the IISP protocol. The well known address may represent any entity in the network that provides distributed services (e.g., network server applications) that are to be shared among many nodes and applications on the network, such as LECSs. The method of functions to automatically and dynamically register ‘well known’ addresses on the ports of each node that implements the invention. This permits applications on the network to route to the destination in the shortest possible path thus utilizing network resources in an efficient manner. If there is more than one location with the well known address, e.g., a redundant LECSs in the network, or more than one route to the location then the optimum location will be the one routed to. An optimum location can be determined using any suitable criteria to determine the optimum route to a LECS such as distance, hop count, cost function, link sum, link capacity, etc.

Claims13

Dependent claims

In an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network having a plurality of nodes, a network server application implemented on one of said nodes, a method of routing to a well known address, said method comprising the steps of:

sending an indication message containing a cost value on a periodic basis out on all Network to Network Interface (NNI) ports in the node that implements said network server application;
receiving a message containing said cost value on a node;
registering said well known address and a received cost value associated therewith on the port receiving said indication message if said well known address has not been previously registered;
updating an existing cost value with said received cost value;
incrementing said received cost value by one to yield a new cost value;
forwarding an indication message containing said new cost value out on ports having a larger cost value registered therewith and on ports without a registered cost value if said received cost value is smaller than or equal to the smallest cost value associated with other NNI ports;
and
routing a call request to said network server application, made by a user connected to a node, via the port with the smallest cost value associated therewith.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method of dynamically routing to a well known address in a network

Life of this patent

Method of dynamically routing to a well known address in a network

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims13