Patent ID: 9473358
Filing Date: 2016-10-18
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method of implementing an expandable distributed core architecture (“DCA”) having reserved interconnect bandwidths, the method comprising: obtaining, by a computing system, requirements for DCA operation, the requirements comprising first requirements for the expandable DCA and second requirements for an expanded DCA, the first requirements specifying a number of uplink ports and a number of downlink ports for the expandable DCA, the second requirements specifying a number of uplink ports and a number of downlink ports for the expanded DCA, wherein at least one of (i) and (ii) is true: (i) the number of uplink ports for the expanded DCA is higher than the number of uplink ports for the expandable DCA; (ii) the number of downlink ports for the expanded DCA is higher than the number of downlink ports for the expandable DCA; and determining, by the computing system, a configuration of the expandable DCA based on the first and second requirements and on an optimality objective, wherein determining the configuration comprises using the numbers of the uplink and downlink ports for the expandable DCA and the numbers of the uplink and downlink ports for the expanded DCA to determine a number of spine switches for the expandable DCA, a number of leaf switches for the expandable DCA, and direct interconnections between the spine and leaf switches for the expandable DCA; wherein the configuration is for the expandable DCA corresponding to the first requirements but not the second requirements, but the configuration takes into account the second requirements to provide expandability of the expandable DCA to the expanded DCA with the expanded DCA including all of the spine and leaf switches of the expandable DCA and all of the direct interconnections between the spine and leaf switches of the expandable DCA, the configuration requiring at least one of the spine and leaf switches of the expandable DCA to have at least one port that is unused in the expandable DCA but is used in the expanded DCA; wherein the optimality objective comprises at least one of: low cost; high throughput; high speed; minimal amount of switches; minimal amount of routing components.