Patent ID: 6738352
Filing Date: 2004-05-18
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A transfer destination determining apparatus in a communication network, which manages a received datagram as a collected flow with grouping information identified with the datagram, determining a transfer path wherein a plurality of transfer paths corresponding to each of said collected flows are provided for distributing traffic,wherein the communication network comprises: subscriber networks, and a core network comprising: an edge apparatus for connecting the subscriber networks with said core network, and a repeating apparatus for transferring the data through the core network, wherein IP datagrams from a pre-staged apparatus, are managed as a collected flow with the grouping information identical to the address information contained in the IP datagram, and a transfer path is to be determined from the plurality of transfer paths distributed to a post staged apparatus corresponding to each of said collected flows, and wherein the plurality of transfer paths in the core network are managed with a path identifier applied to a combination of source and destination addresses in the edge apparatus, and wherein the transfer path is determined based upon the flow discrimination information and address information attached to the IP datagram so as to perform Internet communication; and wherein said transfer destination determining apparatus further comprises: a header information extracting part for extracting both address information and flow discrimination information, which are contained in header information of said IP datagram received from a pre-staged apparatus; a route solving part operated in such a manner that when said address information is received and then a single path transfer for uniquely determining a transfer destination is defined from said address information, outputs a transfer path to a post-staged apparatus; whereas when said address information is received and then a multi-path transfer for not uniquely determining a transfer destination but having a plurality of transfer destination subjects is defined from said address information, outputs a multi-path number which is uniquely determined from the address information; and collected flow managing part for inputting thereinto both the flow discrimination information extracted by said header information extracting part and the multi-path number outputted from said route solving part so as to determine a transfer path corresponding to a collected flow determined by both said multi-path number and said flow discrimination information.