Mapping discovery for virtual network
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsMichael John Wray, Christopher Ian Dalton
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsMichael John Wray, Christopher Ian Dalton
Estimating the term…
A virtual network has network interfaces coupled by tunnels (100) through a forwarding network (40), each interface having a forwarding address in an address space of the forwarding network, each network interface having a reconfigurable address mapper (320) for determining a forwarding address for a packet, and encapsulating the packet with its forwarding address so that the forwarding network can forward the data packet transparent to its destination address. The network interface automatically configures the address mapper by sending a discovery request for a given virtual network address over the forwarding network, to prompt a response with an indication of the corresponding forwarding address, and to use the indication in such a response to configure the address mapper. This can ease the administrative burden of setting up and maintaining the address mapper and to ease network reconfiguration according to demand or faults for example.
A network interface that provides, to a user, access to a virtual network, comprising:
A method of configuring an address mapper for a virtual network, the address mapper residing in a network interface that provides a user access to the virtual network, the virtual network having a number of remote interfaces spanning multiple network segments and coupled by multipoint tunneling through a forwarding network, each remote interface having a forwarding address in an address space of the forwarding network, the network interface being arranged to receive data packets to be sent across the virtual network, the data packets having a destination address in an address space of the virtual network, the address mapper being arranged to determine which of the forwarding addresses to use for each packet, according to a destination address within each packet, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.