Patent ID: 11962434
Assignee: KEYSIGHT TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 0:
1. A method for capturing dropped packets at a switching fabric emulator, the method comprising:
at the switching fabric emulator providing an emulated switching fabric comprising emulated switching elements and associated packet queues, wherein the switching fabric emulator comprises at least one switching application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or programmable switching chip:
during a test session:
receiving, via at least a first physical port of the switching fabric emulator, packets from or to a system under test (SUT); detecting an occurrence of a dropped packet-in the emulated switching fabric;
encapsulating dropped packet data associated with the dropped packet, wherein the encapsulated dropped packet data indicates an emulated switching element or packet queue contributing to the occurrence of the dropped packet; and
providing the encapsulated dropped packet data to an analyzer; and

at the analyzer:
receiving the encapsulated dropped packet data;
determining, using the encapsulated dropped packet data, a first encapsulated data field value indicating the emulated switching element or packet queue contributing to the dropped packet;
determining, using the first encapsulated data field value and mappings between encapsulated data field values and emulated switching element identifiers, the emulated switching element or packet queue contributing to the dropped packet, wherein the mappings between encapsulated data field values and emulated switching element identifiers are provisioned prior to executing the test session; and
generating a report or other output indicating that a drop occurred at the emulated switching element or packet queue.