Scalable gateways for a fabric switch
AssigneeBrocade Communications Systems, Inc.
InventorVardarajan Venkatesh
Life of this patent
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Abstract
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a gateway subgroup module, a tunnel management module, and a packet processor. The gateway subgroup module operates the switch in conjunction with a remote switch to form a gateway subgroup. The switch and the remote switch actively operate as tunnel gateways. The tunnel management module maintains a data structure indicating whether a tunnel source subnet is associated with the gateway subgroup. The packet processor decapsulates a tunnel-encapsulated packet in response to a tunnel source subnet of the tunnel-encapsulated packet being associated with the gateway subgroup.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- maintaining a data structure comprising a first mapping between a first tunnel source subnet and a first gateway subgroup, wherein a respective member of a gateway subgroup actively operates as a tunnel gateway;
- determining whether the first tunnel source subnet is associated with a tunnel-encapsulated packet based on the first mapping;
- in response to determining that the first tunnel source subnet is associated with the tunnel-encapsulated packet, decapsulating a tunnel header of the tunnel-encapsulated packet;
- and
- in response to determining that the first tunnel source subnet is not associated with the tunnel-encapsulated packet, refraining from decapsulating the tunnel header of the tunnel-encapsulated packet.
A switch, comprising:
- tunnel management circuitry configured to maintain a data structure comprising a first mapping between a first tunnel source subnet and a first gateway subgroup, wherein a respective member of a gateway subgroup actively operates as a tunnel gateway;
- packet processing circuitry configured to:
- determine whether the first tunnel source subnet is associated with a tunnel-encapsulated packet based on the first mapping;
- in response to determining that the first tunnel source subnet is associated with the tunnel-encapsulated packet, decapsulate a tunnel header of the tunnel-encapsulated packet;
- and
- in response to determining that the first tunnel source subnet is not associated with the tunnel-encapsulated packet, refrain from decapsulating the tunnel header of the tunnel-encapsulated packet.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.