Patent ID: 8223779

Claim:
A controller configured for parallel multi-core control plane processing, comprising: an external interface configured to receive a control plane request comprising call control for a sub-network connection; and one or more processor cores configured to process the control plane request for the sub-network connection through parallel processing, wherein an operating system is configured to operate on the one or more processor cores and to manage the parallel processing of the control plane request sub-network connection, and wherein the parallel processing comprises separately managing a plurality of state machines associated with a control plane and a data plane associated with the sub-network connection on the one or more processor cores; wherein one state machine associated with the control plane is at an originating node and controls a state of the sub-network connection as a whole, another state machine associated with the control plane is at one or more nodes through which the sub-network connection passes and ensures that a cross-connection is established or de-established to satisfy the sub-network connection, and the state machine associated with the data plane establishes traffic at each node once the cross-connection is established.