Patent ID: 11895024
Assignee: NOKIA TECHNOLOGIES OY
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 4:
5. A method of delivering packets, comprising:
receiving, at a first Virtual Network Function Component, VNFC, a data-plane packet for a terminal device from a virtual switch, the packet being forwarded from a second VNFC to the virtual switch and including a network address of the first VNFC as a destination address, the second VNFC separated from the first VNFC, the second VNFC serving the terminal device and including at least one first data-plane application;
performing a predetermined transport processing of the packet to obtain a processed packet;
forwarding the processed packet from the first VNFC to the virtual switch;
delivering the processed packet to an external communication peer;
in response to receipt of, at the first VNFC, a control-plane packet for the terminal device, determining whether a destination address in the control-plane packet matches a preconfigured address; and
in response to the destination address in the control-plane packet matching the preconfigured address, delivering the control-plane packet to a kernel protocol stack of an operating system running on a single server,
wherein the first VNFC and the virtual switch are implemented on the single server, a first memory area on the single server is allocated to the first VNFC, a second memory area on the single server is allocated to the virtual switch, and the first memory area is isolated from the second memory area, and
wherein forwarding the processed packet from the first VNFC to the virtual switch comprises causing the processed packet in the first memory area to be accessed by the virtual switch via an address offset adjustment of the second memory area.