Patent ID: 7453892
Filing Date: 2008-11-18
Classification: H04J,H04L

Abstract:
1. A system for directing data packets within a communications network comprising: a switching fabric operable to switch multiplexed flows of data packets; a plurality of line interface cards, each card including: an ingress interface operably configured to receive multi-protocol data packets from the communication network; ingress processing circuitry operably coupled to the ingress interface, the ingress processing circuitry including an ingress processor, a classification engine, a policing engine, and an editor engine operably arranged in a data flow communication with each other to process data packets received by the ingress interface as multiplexed data flows, said editor engine including an editing module with a plurality of editing instruction and configured to execute multiple transformations per packet using at least one editing instruction selected from the plurality of editing instructions responsive to at least one output of said classification engine; first fabric interface circuitry operably coupled between the ingress processing circuitry and the switching fabric to translate multi-protocol, multiplexed data flows from the ingress processing into a first common protocol multiplexed data flow to the switching fabric; second fabric interface circuitry operably coupled to the switching fabric to receive a second common protocol multiplexed data flow from the switching fabric; an egress interface operably configured to transmit multi-protocol data packets to the communication network; and egress processing circuitry operably coupled between the second fabric interface circuitry and the egress interface to process multi-protocol data packets to transmit to the egress interface in response to the second common protocol multiplexed data flow, wherein the multi-protocol data packets are caused to be indicative of a conformance of the packets to at least one network bandwidth capacity related congestion flow control policy.