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US 8,787,377 B2Granted
Usage of masked BMAC addresses in a provider backbone bridged (PBB) network
AssigneeAvaya Inc.
InventorSrikanth Keesara
Life of this patent
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AssigneeAvaya Inc.
InventorSrikanth Keesara
Estimating the term…
Techniques disclosed herein include features and methods that extend functionality of provider networks including Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) networks. Techniques include using a portion of information within Ethernet address encapsulation headers for purposes other than identifying source and destination device addresses. The system limits a number of bits in an address header that should be considered by a provider network node when doing an address lookup in forwarding tables of a provider network node, such as by masking the portion of bits or otherwise disregarding that portion of bits during address lookup. The remaining bits in the address field(s) become free bits that can be used for a variety of application purposes, such as flow path selection. By using information fields that already exist in the Mac-In-Mac (MIM) encapsulation header, such Techniques provide additional information without increasing packet size or requiring new protocols.
A computer-implemented method for packet switching in a provider network, the computer-implemented method comprising:
A computer program product including a non-transitory computer-storage medium having instructions stored thereon for processing data information, such that the instructions, when carried out by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform the operations of:
A computer-implemented method for packet switching in a provider network, the computer-implemented method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.