Patent ID: 8472447
Filing Date: 2013-06-25
Classification: H04L,Y02D

Abstract:
1. An aggregation switch in a multi-chassis system for performing Internet Protocol (IP) multicast snooping, comprising: a plurality of virtual fabric link (VFL) ports coupled to a VFL, wherein the VFL is connected to a remote aggregation switch, wherein the remote aggregation switch is active and in a separate physical chassis; a plurality of external ports coupled to at least one edge node and at least one network node; a database maintaining IP multicast snooping information; and a chassis management module for receiving the snooping information via at least the external ports, storing the snooping information within the database and sharing the snooping information substantially in real-time with the remote aggregation switch via the VFL; wherein the chassis management module further builds respective forwarding vectors for multicast traffic flows received from the at least one network node via the external ports or the VLF ports based on the snooping information; wherein the chassis management module further determines a multicast index for a received multicast traffic flow to set-up hardware paths for forwarding the received multicast traffic flow to the external ports in a virtual local area network (VLAN) that requested the received multicast traffic flow via the at least one edge node, the multicast index being used globally between the aggregation switch and the remote aggregation switch.