Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9246834B2/en
Timestamp: 2019-08-25 05:16:45
Document Index: 118571756

Matched Legal Cases: ['Application No. 60', 'Application No. 200880003496', 'Application No. 200580034646', 'Application No. 200580034647', 'Application No. 200580034955', 'Application No. 200580034647', 'Application No. 200880003496', 'Application No. 200580034955', 'Application No. 200580034647', 'Application No. 200580034646', 'Application No. 200580034646', 'Application No. 200580034647', 'Application No. 200580034955']

US9246834B2 - Fibre channel over ethernet - Google Patents
US9246834B2
US9246834B2 US14/486,371 US201414486371A US9246834B2 US 9246834 B2 US9246834 B2 US 9246834B2 US 201414486371 A US201414486371 A US 201414486371A US 9246834 B2 US9246834 B2 US 9246834B2
US14/486,371
US20150036499A1 (en
2012-04-11 Priority to US13/444,556 priority patent/US8842694B2/en
2014-09-15 Application filed by Cisco Technology Inc filed Critical Cisco Technology Inc
2014-09-15 Priority to US14/486,371 priority patent/US9246834B2/en
2015-02-05 Publication of US20150036499A1 publication Critical patent/US20150036499A1/en
2016-01-26 Publication of US9246834B2 publication Critical patent/US9246834B2/en
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/444,556, entitled “Fibre Channel Over Ethernet” and filed Apr. 11, 2012, which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/485,337, entitled “Fibre Channel Over Ethernet” and filed on Jun. 16, 2009, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/078,992, entitled “Fibre Channel Over Ethernet” and filed on Mar. 10, 2005, which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/621,396, entitled “FC Over Ethernet” and filed on Oct. 22, 2004, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Within data center 105, there are many network devices. For example, many servers are typically disposed on racks having a standard form factor (e.g., one “rack unit” would be 19″ wide and about 1.25″ thick). A “Rack Unit” or “U” is an Electronic Industries Alliance (or more commonly “EIA”) standard measuring unit for rack mount type equipment. This term has become more prevalent in recent times due to the proliferation of rack mount products showing up in a wide range of commercial, industrial and military markets. A “Rack Unit” is equal to 1.75″ in height. To calculate the internal usable space of a rack enclosure you would simply multiply the total amount of Rack Units by 1.75″. For example, a 44 U rack enclosure would have 77″ of internal usable space (44×1.75). Racks within a data center may have, e.g., about 40 servers each. A data center may have thousands of servers, or even more. Recently, some vendors have announced “blade servers,” which allow even higher-density packing of servers (on the order of 60 to 80 servers per rack).
Although LLE switches of the present invention can be implemented using fiber optics and optical transceivers, some preferred LLE switches are implemented using copper connectivity to reduce costs. Some such implementations are implemented according to the proposed IEEE 802.3ak standard called 10 Base-CX4, which is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes. The inventors expect that other implementations will use the emerging standard IEEE P802.3an (10 GBASE-T), which is also incorporated by reference for all purposes.
a plurality of Data Center Ethernet (“DCE”) ports, an individual DCE port in communication with another DCE port over a physical link that is configured as a plurality of virtual lanes, where each of the plurality of virtual lanes is dynamically assigned as either a drop lane or a no-drop lane with at least one virtual lane assigned as a drop lane while at least one other virtual lane is assigned as a no-drop lane; and
buffer space dynamically assigned to each virtual lane.
2. The networking device of claim 1 wherein the individual DCE port maintains a credit count for an individual virtual lane of the plurality of virtual lanes and only transmits a frame when the credit count equals or exceeds the frame length.
3. The network device of claim 1 wherein the drop lanes are managed according to a probabilistic drop function, which gradually increases the probability of dropping a packet from 0% to 100% over a period of time.
4. The network device of claim 1 wherein the network device is configured to perform a storage gateway function.
5. The network device of claim 1 wherein the network device transforms FC frames as Ethernet frames.
6. The network device of claim 1 wherein an individual virtual lane is assigned a guaranteed bandwidth on the physical link.
7. The network device of claim 6 wherein the guaranteed bandwidth is dynamically changed.
8. The network device of claim 1 wherein a virtual lane is identified in a header of a DCE frame carried by the virtual lane.
applying a first set of rules to first traffic on a first virtual lane;
applying a second set of rules to second traffic on a second virtual lane; and
dynamically assigning buffer space to each virtual lane.
10. The method of claim 9, wherein the first traffic comprises Ethernet traffic.
11. The method of claim 9, wherein the second traffic comprises storage traffic.
12. The method of claim 9, wherein the first set of rules causes frames to be dropped in response to latency.
13. The method of claim 9, wherein the first set of rules causes an explicit congestion notification to be transmitted in response to latency.
14. The method of claim 9, wherein the second set of rules causes an explicit congestion notification to be transmitted in response to latency.
15. The method of claim 9, wherein each of the plurality of physical links corresponds to one of a plurality of Data Center Ethernet (“DCE”) ports.
16. The method of claim 15, wherein a header of a DCE frame carried by one of the plurality of virtual lanes comprises an identifier of the corresponding one of the plurality of lanes.
US14/486,371 2004-10-22 2014-09-15 Fibre channel over ethernet Active US9246834B2 (en)
US13/444,556 Continuation US8842694B2 (en) 2004-10-22 2012-04-11 Fibre Channel over Ethernet
US20150036499A1 US20150036499A1 (en) 2015-02-05
US9246834B2 true US9246834B2 (en) 2016-01-26
CIPO First Office Action mailed Aug. 11, 2011 in Chinese Application No. 200880003496.0.
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CIPO Second Office Action mailed Feb. 5, 2010, in Chinese Application No. 200580034647.5.
CIPO Second Office Action mailed Jan. 15, 2010, in Chinese Application No. 200580034646.0.
CIPO Third Office Action dated Jul. 6, 2011, in Chinese Application No. 200580034646.0.
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US20100177637A1 (en) 2010-07-15 Flow based congestion control