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US 9,313,131 B2Granted
Hardware implemented ethernet multiple tuple filter system and method
AssigneesSTMicroelectronics S.r.l., Cisco Technology, Inc.
InventorsMaynard Darvel Hammond, Charaf Hanna, Zhifang J. Ni, Andrew Graham Whitlow, Benjamin Nelson Darby, Gale L. Shallow
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Abstract
A filter in a DOCSIS bridge performs IP Filtering of incoming Ethernet packets in hardware. The filter includes a parser circuit which, in hardware, parses each of the incoming Ethernet packets and then utilizes the parsed information in combination with a content-addressable memory (CAM) that stores filtering information, to filter and route the incoming Ethernet packets. Detailed statistical data may also be generated to provide information on the type of filtering being performed by the DOCSIS bridge.
Claims18
An electronic device, comprising:
- a specialized content addressable memory configured to store filter information that is utilized in filtering upstream and downstream Ethernet frames;
- a downstream bridge circuit coupled to the specialized content addressable memory, the downstream bridge circuit including hardware circuitry operable to parse downstream Ethernet frames to obtain parsed information from these downstream Ethernet frames and to route and filter the downstream Ethernet frames based on this parsed information and the filter information stored in the specialized content addressable memory;
- an upstream bridge circuit coupled to the specialized content addressable memory, the upstream bridge circuit including hardware circuitry operable to parse upstream Ethernet frames to obtain parsed information from these upstream Ethernet frames and to route and filter the upstream Ethernet frames based on this parsed information and the filter information stored in the specialized content addressable memory;
- and
- wherein the downstream bridge circuit includes a downstream IP filter implemented entirely in hardware circuitry, the downstream IP filter configured to filter and route the downstream Ethernet frames based on the contents of fields extracted from the Ethernet frames and from higher level packets encapsulated in the Ethernet frames, and on the filter information stored in the specialized content addressable memory.
2 more elements
An electronic device, comprising:
- an upstream bridge configured to perform IP filtering on incoming Ethernet frames, the upstream bridge comprising:
- a specialized content-addressable memory configured to store filtering information;
- and
- hardware IP filters coupled to the specialized content-addressable memory, the hardware IP filters configured to extract frame information from the Ethernet frames and to route and filter the incoming Ethernet packets responsive to the extracted routing and frame information and the filtering information of the content-addressable memory;
- wherein the hardware IP filters comprise:
- a pre-CAM filter configured to extract commonly utilized fields in each downstream Ethernet frame and to filter the Ethernet frame based on the values of these extracted fields;
- an ingress filter coupled to the pre-CAM filter to receive filtered Ethernet frames from the pre-CAM filter and configured to extract fields from these Ethernet frames to perform DOCSIS Set-top gateway (DSG) filtering, Link Level Control (LLC) filtering, Internet Protocol (IP) filtering and IP routing filtering on the Ethernet frames from the pre-CAM filter;
- and
- an egress filter coupled to the ingress filter and configured to extract fields from the Ethernet frames from the ingress filter and to modify routing of the Ethernet frames when the extracted fields of the Ethernet frames have specified values.
6 more elements
An electronic device, comprising:
- a downstream bridge configured to perform IP filtering on incoming Ethernet frames, the downstream bridge comprising:
- a hardware IP filter adapted to receive filtering information from a specialized content-addressable memory, the hardware IP filter including an IP parser configured to extract tuple information from the Ethernet frames and to route and filter the incoming Ethernet frames responsive to the extracted tuple information, and configured to generate statistics to convey information on the filtering and routing of Ethernet frames being performed;
- and
- wherein the IP parser comprises hardware circuitry configured to extract the tuple information in the form of selected fields from the incoming Ethernet frames.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.