Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20050105538A1/en
Timestamp: 2019-01-17 22:18:30
Document Index: 628395211

Matched Legal Cases: ['application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60', 'application No. 60']

US20050105538A1 - Switching system with distributed switching fabric - Google Patents
Switching system with distributed switching fabric Download PDF
US20050105538A1
US20050105538A1 US10965444 US96544404A US2005105538A1 US 20050105538 A1 US20050105538 A1 US 20050105538A1 US 10965444 US10965444 US 10965444 US 96544404 A US96544404 A US 96544404A US 2005105538 A1 US2005105538 A1 US 2005105538A1
US10965444
This application claims priority to provisional application No. 60/511,145 filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,144 filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,143, filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,142 filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,141 filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,140 filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,139 filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,138 filed Oct. 14, 2003; provisional application No. 60/511,021 filed Sep. 14, 2003; and provisional application No. 60/563,262 filed Apr. 16, 2004, all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,256,546 to Beshai (March 2002) describes a protocol that uses an adaptive packet header to simplify packet routing and increase transfer speed among switch modules. Beshai's system is advantageous because it is not limited to a fixed cell length, such as the 53 byte length of an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) system, and because it reportedly has better quality of service and higher throughput that an Internetworking Protocol (IP) switched network. The Beshai patent, is incorporated herein by reference along with all other extrinsic material discussed herein Prior art FIG. 1A depicts a system according to Beshai's '546 patent. There, pluralities of edge modules (ingress modules 110A-D and egress modules 130A-D) are interconnected by a passive core 120. Each of the ingress modules 110A-D accept data packets in multiple formats, adds a standardized header that indicates a destination for the packet, and switches the packets to the appropriate egress modules 130A-D through the passive core 120. At the egress modules 130A-D the header is removed from the packet, and the packet is transferred to a sink in its native format. The solid lines of 112A-112D depict unencapsulated information arriving to circuit ports, ATM ports, frame relay ports, IP ports, and UTM ports. Similarly, the solid lines of 132A-D depict unencapsulated information exiting to the various ports in the native format of the information. The dotted lines of core 120 and facing portions of the ingress 110A-D and egress 130A-D modules depict information that is contained UTM headed packets. The entire system 100 operates as a single distributed switch, in which all switching is done at the edge (ingress and egress modules).
Beshai publication no. 2001/0006522 (July 2001) resolves one of the deficiencies of the '546 patent, namely the single channel limitation between modules. In the '522 application Beshai teaches a switching system having packet-switching edge modules and channel switching core modules. As shown in prior art FIG. 1B, traffic entering the system through ports 162A is sorted at each edge module 160A-D, and switched to various core elements 180A-C via paths 170. The core elements switch the traffic to other destination edge modules 180A-C, for delivery to final destinations. Beshai contemplates that the core elements can use channel switching to minimize the potential wasted time in a pure TDM (time division mode) system, and that the entire system can use time counter co-ordination to realize harmonious reconfiguration of edge modules and core modules.
Leaving aside the switching mechanisms between and within the core elements, the channel switching core of the '522 application provides nothing more than virtual channels between edge devices. It does not switch individual packets of data. Thus, even though the '522 application incorporates by reference Beshai's Ser. No. 09/244,824 application regarding. High-Capacity Packet Switch (issued as 6721271 in April 2004), the '522 application still fails to teach, suggest, or motivate one of ordinary skill to provide a fully distributed network (edge and core) that acts as a single switch.
FIG. 4 shows a high level design of a preferred combination Ingress/Egress element FIG. 5 shows a high level design of a preferred core element FIG. 6 is a schematic of a Raptor™ 1010 switch.
FIG. 7 is a schematic of a preferred commercial embodiment of a hybrid core-ingress device, designated as a Raptomm 1808 switch. The switch 700 could include eight 10 GBase ingress elements 710A-D, a core element 720, or eight intermediate connector elements 730A-D, or any combination of elements up to a total of eight.
Each element transmits an initial MDP establish message containing its MAC address and user assigned priority number (if assigned 0 used if not set). Each element also listens for incoming MDP messages, containing such information. As each element receives the MDP messages, one of two decisions is made. If the received MAC address is lower than the MAC address assigned to the receiving element, the message is forwarded to all active links with the original MAC address, the link number it was received on, and the MAC address of the system that is forwarding the message. If a priority is set, the lowest priority (greater than 0) is deemed as lowest MAC address and processed as such. If on the other hand the received MAC address is higher than the MAC address assigned to the receiving element, then the message is not forwarded. If a priority is set that is higher than the received priority, the same process is carried out.
Link Aggregation IEEE 802.3ad can operate across the entire cluster. This allows other vendors' systems that use IEEE 802.3ad to aggregate traffic over multiple hardware platforms, and provides greater levels of redundancy than heretofore possible.
Virtual LANs (VLANs) 802.1Q can operate over the entire cluster without the need for VLAN trunks or VLAN tagging on inter-switch links. Still further, port mirroring (a defacto standard) is readily implemented, providing mirroring of any port in a cluster to any other port in the cluster.
Pause frames received on any ingress/egress port can be reflected over the cluster to all ports contributing to the traffic flow on that port, and pause frames can be issued on those contributing ports to avoid bottlenecks.
ISO Layer 3 (IP routing) operates over the entire cluster as though it was a single routed hop, even though the cluster may be geographically separated by 160 Km or more.
ISO Layer 4 ACLs can be assigned to any switch element in the cluster just as they would be in any standard layer 2/3/4 switch, and a single ACL may be applied to the entire cluster in a single command.
IEEE 802.1X operates over the entire cluster, which would not the case if a standard set of switching systems were connected.
In FIG. 9, a super fabric implementation 900 of a distributed switching fabric generally includes four 20 Gbps pipes 910A-D, each of which is connected to a corresponding cluster 920A-D that includes a control element 922A-D that understand the cluster messaging structure. Within each cluster there are numerous ingress/egress elements 400 coupled together. In this particular embodiment there each of the control elements 922A-D has two 10 Gbps pipes that connect the ingress/egress elements 400 for intra-cluster communication. There are also inter-cluster pipes 930A-D, which in this instance also communicate at 10 Gbps.
1. A network switch for routing packets of information, comprising:
a plurality of ingress switching elements, each with a plurality of input and output ports;
hardware that adds a routing header to the packets entering the input ports of the plurality of ingress elements a plurality of egress switching elements, each with a plurality of input and output ports;
a backbone that provides active switching among the plurality of ingress and egress elements; and
wherein each of the switching elements is adapted to use the routing header to pass the packets through the backbone from one of the ingress switching elements to at least one of the egress switching elements to which the one ingress element is not otherwise directly connected.
2. The switch of claim 1 wherein each of the pluralities of ingress and egress elements support a protocol providing connectionless media with a stateful connection.
3. The switch of claim 2 wherein the stateful connection comprises Ethernet.
4. The switch of claim 1 wherein each of the pluralities of ingress and egress elements has at least 8 input ports and 8 output ports.
5. The switch of claim 1 wherein at least one of the pluralities of ingress elements has a capacity of at least one gigabit/sec.
6. The switch of claim 1 wherein at least one of the pluralities of ingress elements has a capacity of at least ten gigabit/sec.
7. The switch of claim 1, having hardware that executes a management discovery protocol that determines from time to time which of the plurality of ingress and egress elements becomes a master element.
8. The switch of claim 1, having hardware that executes a management discovery protocol that determines which element becomes a new master on the failure of the existing master using a heart beat protocol.
9. The switch of claim 7, wherein each of the plurality of ingress and egress elements executes the management discovery protocol.
10. The switch of claim 1, further comprising first hardware that encapsulates packets of information with a routing header that is used to route the packets within the switch, and second hardware that removes the routing header.
11. The switch of claim 10, wherein the routing header includes a source element address, destination element address, and a destination port address.
12. The switch of claim 10, wherein at least some of the pluralities of egress elements are logically coupled in a cluster and the routing header includes a destination cluster address.
13. The switch of claim 10, wherein the plurality of ingress and egress elements are coupled using a Strict Ring Topology (SRT).
14. The switch of claim 1, further comprising an element manager unit that sends element messages to at least some of the plurality of ingress and egress elements.
15. The switch of claim 14, wherein at least one of the element messages implements a secure data protocol (SDP) that performs ACK/NAK function on the messages.
16. The switch of claim 14, wherein at least one of the element messages implements a port to port (PTP) protocol.
17. The switch of claim 14, wherein at least one of the element messages implements an active/active protection service (AAPS).
18. The switch of claim 14, further comprising hardware that maintains a list of recent element messages.
19. A switching system comprising first and second clusters of switches according to claim 1.
20. The switching system according to claim 19, wherein inter-cluster communication is implemented via dynamic VLAN tunnels.
21. The switching system according to claim 19, wherein inter-cluster communication is implemented via a PTP protocol based matrix of link addresses.
22. The switching system according to claim 19, wherein the first and second clusters are separated by at least 1 kilometer.
23. The switching system according to claim 19, further comprising a third cluster, and where the first, second and third clusters execute an automatically configuring topology.
24. A method of routing Ethernet packets, comprising:
providing a plurality of switch ingress modules that encapsulate the Ethernet packets into frames having intra-system routing headers;
providing a plurality of egress switch modules that remove the headers from the packets;
providing a core that actively routes the frames between ingress and egress modules, and among core elements;
wherein at least one of the ingress and one of the egress modules are distanced from one another by at least 1 km, and at least two of the core elements are distanced from one another by the distance of a least 1 km.
24. The system of claim 24, further comprising the core connecting at least 16 ports among the plurality of ingress and egress modules.
25. The system of claim 24, further comprising providing an optical carrier as a component of the core.
26. The system of claim 24, further comprising operating a link aggregation across the entire system that conforms to an IEEE standard.
27. The system of claim 24, further comprising operating a virtual LAN (VLAN) across the entire system without a need for a VLAN trunk or VLAN tagging.
28. The system of claim 24, further comprising providing a protocol that at least temporarily prevents data from being sent to a selected one of the ports.
29. The system of claim 24, further comprising implementing layer 3 (IP) routing among the plurality of modules.
30. The system of claim 24, further comprising providing the plurality of modules with port based network access control capability that conforms with an IETF standard.
31. The system of claim 24, further comprising, providing the plurality of modules with detection of layer 2 (Ethernet) to layer 7 (Application) data, and decisions on dynamic routing or handling of said data.
32. The system of claim 24, further comprising sending management messages to at least some of the plurality of modules, wherein at least one of the messages implementing a secure data protocol (SDP) that using positive acknowledgement function on the messages, and at least another one of the element messages implementing a port to port (PTP) protocol, and at least another one of the element messages implementing an Ethernet frame based active/active protection service (AAPS).
33. The system of claim 24, further comprising logically coupling at least some of the plurality of modules into first and second clusters, and separating the clusters by at least 1 kilometer.
US10965444 2003-10-14 2004-10-12 Switching system with distributed switching fabric Abandoned US20050105538A1 (en)
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US11248111 US20060039369A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Multiplexing system having an automatically configured topology
US11248707 US20060029071A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Multiplexing system that supports a geographically distributed subnet
US11248708 US20060029072A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Switching system for virtual LANs
US11248710 US20060029056A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Virtual machine task management system
US11248711 US20060029057A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Time division multiplexing system
US11248639 US20060029055A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 VLAN fabric network
US11610281 US7352745B2 (en) 2003-10-14 2006-12-13 Switching system with distributed switching fabric
US11248111 Division US20060039369A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Multiplexing system having an automatically configured topology
US11248707 Division US20060029071A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Multiplexing system that supports a geographically distributed subnet
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US11248639 Division US20060029055A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 VLAN fabric network
US11610281 Continuation US7352745B2 (en) 2003-10-14 2006-12-13 Switching system with distributed switching fabric
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US11248707 Abandoned US20060029071A1 (en) 2003-10-14 2005-10-11 Multiplexing system that supports a geographically distributed subnet
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US11610281 Active US7352745B2 (en) 2003-10-14 2006-12-13 Switching system with distributed switching fabric
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