Patent ID: 8908682
Filing Date: 2014-12-09
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A distributed fabric system comprising: a plurality of independent network elements interconnected by inter-switch links and assigned to a same group, each network element including one or more switching chips, a processor, and memory storing program code that is executed by the processor, the program code of each network element including a switch discovery protocol (SDP) module, the SDP module of each network element, when executed, periodically multicasting SDP data units (SDPDUs) using one of a plurality of transmission rates, the plurality of transmission rates including a fast transmission rate and a slow transmission rate, the transmission rate used by the SDP module of each network element being the fast transmission rate until the SDP module of that network element detects stability among all of the network elements in the same group, in response to which the transmission rate used by the SDP module of that network element changes to the slow transmission rate, wherein a criterion for detecting stability is that a number of consecutive transmissions of an unchanged SDPDU by the SDP module of that network element exceeds a threshold.