US 7,746,860 B2Granted

Testing applications or devices in large networks

Assignee3Com Corporation

InventorsJonathan Gilbert Gordon Tams, David James Stevenson, Iain Hogg

Life of this patent

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Abstract

When testing network management applications, it is desirable to show that they will work with large or very large networks, to determine the upper bounds of the applications capabilities, and improvements which might increase the upper bounds. A method of testing a network application is disclosed mapping a layer-3 addresses of a real subnetwork onto a plurality of mapped layer-3 subnetwork addresses for conversations with applications or devices. Packets are modified to change a destination layer-3 address in a mapped subnetwork, pointing to corresponding real IP address and forwarding the packets. The conversation to which a response from a reallayer-3 address relates is identified. The source layer-3 address and packet contents are changed into the appropriate mapped subnetwork and the packet is forwarded to the application or device. An existing test network of any size may be used as the basis for testing the network management application.

Claims2

Dependent claims

A computer program on computer readable non-transitory medium loaded onto a digital computer and executed, when executed comprising the following steps:

receiving a packet from an application or a device;
if the packet belongs to an existing conversation then going to a session ID check process;
otherwise recording a mapped subnet and a session ID;
if said session ID is unique then going to a mapping process,
otherwise mapping said session ID to a unique session ID;
recording said unique session ID and going to the mapping process;
wherein the session ID check process comprises the following steps:
if the session ID is unique then going to the mapping process,
otherwise mapping the session ID to the unique session ID and going to the mapping process;
wherein the mapping process comprises the following steps:
mapping a destination IP address to a real IP address equivalents;
mapping a source IP address, the destination IP address, a source MAC address and a destination MAC address in the packet to their real address equivalents;
updating a checksum and field lengths;
and
sending the packet out onto a network.

12 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 11/192,772Filed 29 Jul 2005
Priority: GB 0509409.99 May 2005
Published: US 2006/0251075 A19 Nov 2006
Granted: 29 Jun 2010
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification6 codes

H04L 41/00
Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks
H04L 43/50
Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks: testing arrangements
H04L 47/10
Traffic control in data switching networks: flow control; Congestion control
H04L 61/2503
Of the same type: translation of Internet protocol [IP] addresses

Family

US 2006/0251075 A1Pre-grant publication · published 9 Nov 2006
US 7,746,860 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.

Timeline

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