Patent ID: 11923996
Assignee: NICIRA, INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 19:
20. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing a program which when executed by at least one processing unit implements logical networks on a plurality of shared managed forwarding elements, the program comprising sets of instructions for:
configuring a plurality of software forwarding elements executing on a first plurality of host computers to implement a logical forwarding element of a logical network, the first plurality of host computers executing a first plurality of machines connected to the logical network, wherein the logical network is an overlay logical network;
defining a plurality of tunnel endpoints on the first plurality of host computers for the overlay logical network;
to connect a second plurality of machines executing on a second plurality of host computers that do not have software forwarding elements configured as one or more logical forwarding elements of the logical network, configuring a set of top-of-rack (TOR) switches to be part of the logical network so as to connect the first and second plurality of machines, said set of TOR switches communicatively coupled to the second plurality of host computers;
identifying a tunnel endpoint for the overlay logical network on each TOR switch in the set of TOR switches;
defining a multicast group comprising a plurality of tunnel endpoints on the first plurality of host computers for the overlay logical network, wherein the multicast group does not include the tunnel endpoint of any TOR switch; and
selecting a second tunnel endpoint that is a member of the particular multicast group for receiving a message by unicast from a TOR switch and replicating the received message to other members of the particular multicast group.