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US 8,135,007 B2Granted
Method and mechanism for port redirects in a network switch
AssigneeExtreme Networks, Inc.
InventorsRahul S. Kasralikar, Ram Krishnan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for selectively redirecting a data packet to a port on a switching device which is associated with a corresponding network service. In one embodiment, the data packet is redirected to an intrusion prevention service (IPS) for security analysis of the data packet. In another embodiment, the switching device performs a data link layer redirecting of the data packet based at least in part on whether the data packet is to be flooded from the switching device.
Claims28
A method at a switching device in a network, the method comprising:
- receiving a data packet to be directed to one or more destinations in the network;
- determining whether a condition of the network indicates that the received data packet is associated with a redirect port of the switching device, wherein the redirect port is associated with a network service configured to return a redirected data packet to the switching device based on an analysis of the redirected data packet;
- determining whether the received data packet is to be flooded from multiple ports of the switching device, wherein the received data packet is to be flooded from the multiple ports of the switching device if it is determined that the received data packet includes a broadcast destination address, or if it is determined that the received data packet includes a destination address which fails to correspond to any entry in a forwarding database;
- where it is determined that the received data packet is to be flooded, flooding the received data packet from the multiple ports of the switching device, wherein the redirect port is isolated from the flooding of the received data packet;
- and
- where it is determined that the condition of the network indicates that the received data packet is associated with the redirect port and where it is determined that the received data packet is not to be flooded from the switching device, redirecting the received data packet to the redirect port.
3 more elements
A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium having stored thereon a set of instructions which when executed by one or more processors cause the one or more processors to perform a method comprising:
- receiving a data packet to be directed to one or more destinations in the network;
- determining whether a condition of the network indicates that the received data packet is associated with a redirect port of the switching device, wherein the redirect port is associated with a network service configured to return a redirected data packet to the switching device based on a result of an analysis of the redirected data packet;
- determining whether the recieved data packet is to be flooded from multiple ports of the switching device, wherein the received data packet is to be flooded from the multiple ports of the switching device if it is determined that the received data packet includes a broadcast destination address, or if it is determined that the received data packet includes a destination address which fails to correspond to any entry in a forwarding database;
- where it is determined that the received data packet is to be flooded, flooding the received data packet from the multiple ports of the switching device, wherein the redirect port is isolated from the flooding of the received data packet;
- and
- where it is determined that the condition of the network indicates that the received data packet is associated with the redirect port and where it is determined that the received data packet is not to be flooded from the switching device, redirecting the received data packet to the redirect port.
3 more elements
A switching device comprising:
- multiple ports;
- a redirect port associated with a network service configured to return a redirected data packet to the switching device based on an analysis of the redirected data packet;
- a flow handler to determine whether a received data packet is to be flooded from the multiple ports of the switching device, wherein the received data packet is to be flooded from the multiple ports of the switching device if it is determined that the received data packet includes a broadcast destination address, or if it is determined that the received data packet includes a destination address which fails to correspond to any entry in a forwarding database;
- a traffic selector to determine whether a condition of a network indicates that the received data packet is associated with the redirect port;
- and
- a switching mechanism coupled to the traffic selector and to the flow handler, wherein:
- where it is determined that the condition of the network indicates that the received data packet is associated with the redirect port, and where it is determined that the received data packet is not to be flooded from the switching device, the switching mechanism to redirect the received data packet to the redirect port;
- and
- where it is determined that the received data packet is to be flooded from the multiple ports of the switching device, the switching mechanism to flood the received data packet, wherein the switching mechanism to isolate the redirect port from the flooding of the received data packet.
6 more elements
A system comprising:
- a switching device having,
- multiple ports;
- a redirect port, and
- a switching mechanism coupled to the multiple ports and to the redirect port, wherein:
- where it is determined that a condition of a network indicates that a received data packet is associated with the redirect port, and where it is determined that the received data packet is not to be flooded from the switching device, the switching mechanism to redirect the received data packet to the redirect port;
- and
- where it is determined that the received data packet is to be flooded from the switching device, the switching mechanism to flood the received data packet from the switching device, wherein the switching mechanism to isolate the redirect port from the flooding of the received data packet, wherein the received data packet is to be flooded from the multiple ports of the switching device if it is determined that the received data packet includes a broadcast destination address, or if it is determined that the received data packet includes a destination address which fails to correspond to any entry in a forwarding database;
- a network service to receive the redirected data packet from the redirect port of the switching device, the network service further to return the redirected data packet to the switching device based on an analysis of the redirected data packet;
- and
- a serial bus coupling the switching device to the network service.
7 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.