Patents Assigned to Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
  • Enabling concurrent operation of tail-drop and priority-based flow control in network devices
    Patent number: 9608918
    Abstract: In one embodiment, a network device is provided that includes a plurality of ports, where each port is associated with a plurality of traffic classes for prioritizing traffic received on the port. The network device further includes a packet buffer memory, an ingress traffic management engine, and an egress traffic management engine. The network device is configured to allow, for each port, concurrent operation of tail-drop and priority-based flow control (PFC) with respect to different traffic classes of the port.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 13, 2014
    Date of Patent: March 28, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Ling Yang, Ravi Swamy
  • Non-intrusive diagnostic port for inter-switch and node link testing
    Patent number: 9602197
    Abstract: A diagnostic testing utility is used to perform single link diagnostics tests including an electrical loopback test, an optical loopback test, a link traffic test, and a link distance measurement test. These diagnostics tests can be performed on trunked links and virtual channels and can be performed while QoS is enabled. Additionally the tests can be performed non-intrusively by using a dedicated VC such that regular traffic is not affected by the diagnostics testing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 26, 2014
    Date of Patent: March 21, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Nhan Trong Pham, Badrinath Kollu
  • Global VLANs for fabric switches
    Patent number: 9602430
    Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a virtual local area network (VLAN) configuration module. During operation, the VLAN configuration module maps local resources of the switch and/or locally coupled end device information to a global VLAN identifier, wherein the global VLAN is persistent across a fabric switch. The fabric switch is operable to accommodate a plurality of switches and operates as a single logical switch.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 20, 2013
    Date of Patent: March 21, 2017
    Assignee: BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC.
    Inventors: Suresh Vobbilisetty, Phanidhar Koganti, Chi Lung Chong
  • IP-BASED INTERCONNECTION OF SWITCHES WITH A LOGICAL CHASSIS
    Publication number: 20170078150
    Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a logical channel apparatus and a tunnel apparatus. The logical channel apparatus associates a logical channel identifier of a logical channel with the switch and assigns an Internet Protocol (IP) address as switch identifier of the switch. The logical channel includes a plurality of member switches and the switch is a member switch of the logical channel. The IP address uniquely identifies the switch in the logical channel. The tunnel apparatus establishes a tunnel with a remote switch in the logical channel. An inter-switch packet from the switch is encapsulated in a tunnel header associated with the tunnel.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 28, 2015
    Publication date: March 16, 2017
    Applicant: BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC.
    Inventors: Phanidhar Koganti, Suresh Vobbilisetty
  • Floating daughter card system
    Patent number: 9591781
    Abstract: A blade includes both a motherboard and daughter card to allow the combined functionality to be incorporated into a single blade for size reduction. Standoffs couple the daughter card to the motherboard. Cantilever portions of the motherboard and daughter card exist between the standoffs and terminals of the motherboard and daughter card. The cantilever portions bend to accommodate any misalignment between the terminals of the motherboard and the daughter card and mating connectors of a bulkhead or printed circuit board backplane.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 31, 2014
    Date of Patent: March 7, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Anthony Vanderveen, David Skirmont, Peter Doyle
  • Method and apparatus for determining the identity of a virtual machine
    Patent number: 9582310
    Abstract: A hypervisor preferably provides VM (virtual machine) identification, priority and LUN/LBA range information to the HBA (host bus adapter) when a VM is created. Alternatively, the HBA can determine that a LUN/LBA range is new and request VM identity, priority and LUN/LBA range from the hypervisor. The HBA creates a table containing the VM identification, priority and LUN/LBA range. The HBA then detects operations directed to the LUN/LBA range and does a lookup to determine VM identification and priority. VM identification and priority are then mapped into a field in a frame using a unique identifier. The unique identifier can be placed using reserved bits on the existing Fiber Channel (FC) header or can use bits in an additional header, such as a modified IFR header or an optional device header. The VM identification aware HBAs register with the NS.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 28, 2015
    Date of Patent: February 28, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventor: Prasanta Kumar David Bhuyan
  • Bandwidth optimization using coalesced DUP ACKs
    Patent number: 9584425
    Abstract: After sending M consecutive DUP ACKs, M generally being three, the TCP receiver generates DUP ACKs every N packets, with N greater than one, with the eventually transmitted DUP ACK containing SACK information. After receiving the third DUP ACK the TCP transmitter uses the positive acknowledgements provided in the SACK information in the TCP header to inflate the congestion window. With the reduced DUP ACKs from the TCP receiver to the TCP transmitter, the impact of TCP DUP ACKs on the data rate from the TCP receiver to the TCP transmitter is substantially reduced.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 25, 2013
    Date of Patent: February 28, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Maulik Patel, Andy Dooley, Isaac Larson
  • Techniques for managing ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) resources in heterogeneous systems
    Patent number: 9577932
    Abstract: Techniques for managing ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) in a network device/system are provided. In one embodiment, the network device/system can include one or more TCAMs and can execute a TCAM manager for each TCAM. Each TCAM manager can manage allocation of resources of its associated TCAM, as well as manage access to the TCAM by one or more network applications running on the device/system. In this way, the TCAM managers can hide TCAM implementation differences (e.g., different sizes, different capabilities, etc.) from the network applications and thereby enable the applications to interact with the TCAMs in a uniform manner.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 31, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 21, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Anil Kumar Ravipati, Prabhat Singh, Chirdeep Panduranga, Prateek Tambi
  • Packet tracing through control and data plane operations
    Patent number: 9577905
    Abstract: Improved debugging capabilities for network packet path tracing. Embodiments trace both the control and data planes. During control plane operations each switch appends its identity to the payload, providing a full trace of the control plan path. Responses containing the forward path payload are provided back at each hop, the responses being routing back by tracing back the forward direction control plane. The data plane is monitored by setting traps along the control plane path, with responses at each hop that indicate a given switch has been used being returned along the control plane path.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 2015
    Date of Patent: February 21, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Nikunj Vaidya, Vardarajan Venkatesh
  • Port decommissioning
    Patent number: 9571423
    Abstract: A management application can automatically coordinate the decommissioning of ports in a switch, ensuring that ports are gracefully taken out of service without unnecessary interruption of service and triggering of automatic recovery functionality that may occur during manual decommissioning of ports. Embodiments may provide for decommissioning of F_ports only, E_ports only, or both F_ports and E_ports. Where link aggregation is provided for in the fabric, decommissioning of a port in a link aggregation group may be performed if there are other operational links in the group. Decommissioning of a non-aggregated port (or the last operational port in a link aggregation group) may be performed if there is a redundant path available.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 14, 2011
    Date of Patent: February 14, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Nhan Trong Pham, Howard Lynn Johnson, Siming Li, Ethan John Cardwell, Scott Matthew Busch
  • Rule-based network traffic interception and distribution scheme
    Patent number: 9565138
    Abstract: Using a hash function, an L2/L3 switch can produce an FID for a data packet. The L2/L3 switch can select, from among potentially several stored VLAN flooding tables, a particular VLAN flooding table that is associated with a particular VLAN on which the data packet is to be carried. The rows of the particular VLAN flooding table can specify different combinations of the particular VLAN's egress ports. The L2/L3 switch can locate, in the particular VLAN flooding table, a particular row that specifies the FID. The L2/L3 switch can read, from the particular row, a specified subset of the egress ports that are associated with the particular VLAN. The L2/L3 switch can transmit copies of the data packet out each of the egress ports specified in the subset, toward analytic servers connected to those egress ports.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Xiaochu Chen, Ivy Pei-Shan Hsu, Eswara Chinthalapati, Sanjeev Chhabria
  • Virtual machine and application migration over local and wide area networks without timeout using data compression
    Patent number: 9565126
    Abstract: Long distance cloud migration (LDCM) to overcome the limitations faced by the cloud migration techniques over long distance, high speed WAN infrastructures. LDCM overcomes the negative effects of existing TCP/IP mechanisms on the efficient use of available bandwidth. LDCM also acts as an acceleration engine to optimize various hypervisor, storage and security applications.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Senthilkumar Narayanasamy, Indira Radhika Pulla
  • Network congestion management systems and methods
    Patent number: 9565110
    Abstract: Systems, methods and software useful for overcoming network congestion problems including head-of-line blocking issues and other network congestion problems. In certain aspects, flow control mechanisms implemented in a switch device or other network device manage buffer and system level resources using a scheduler to control the amount of data requested from a local SAN fabric. Switches and other network devices configured according to the present invention monitor each individual SCSI task, and are configured to apply flow control measures to each active session when buffering resources become scarce, such as when buffering data for a slower-speed WAN link or TCP/IP based interconnects of any speed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 19, 2010
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Rodney N. Mullendore, Joseph L. White
  • Virtual machine traffic engineering
    Patent number: 9565115
    Abstract: A mechanism to allow switch manager software to determine bandwidth consumption and cooperate with a VM manager. Counter hardware measures network traffic between the various ports of the switch stack. The switch manager determines the MAC or IP addresses of devices connected to each port, which are provided to the VM manager to correlate VMs to ports. The switch manger collects statistics from the counter hardware to determine traffic flow levels between the various ports. A list of high traffic port pairs is provided to the VM manager. In conjunction with each port is a list of available ports, identified by at least one MAC or IP address associated with that port, having capacity to receive the traffic of the respective ports of each port pair and provided in order of least to most hops, to allow the VM manager to select a closer port to receive a migrated VM.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 15, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventor: Hatem Eyada
  • Spanning tree in fabric switches
    Patent number: 9565099
    Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a packet processor and a spanning tree management module. The packet processor obtains information associated with a spanning tree from a message. The spanning tree management module, in response to the obtained information being superior to locally available information of the spanning tree, determines the port role of a local port of the switch for the spanning tree to be the root port and the port state of the local port for the spanning tree to be blocking.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 27, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2017
    Assignee: BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC.
    Inventors: Ganesh D. Venkata, Amit Gupta, Prabu Thayalan, Vardarajan Venkatesh, Mythilikanth Raman, Selvam Muthiah
  • Ingress switch multicast distribution in a fabric switch
    Patent number: 9565028
    Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes an inter-switch multicast module and an edge multicast module. The inter-switch multicast module identifies for a first replication of a multicast packet an egress inter-switch port in a multicast tree rooted at the switch. The multicast tree is identified by an identifier of the switch. The edge multicast module identifies an egress edge port for a second replication of the multicast packet based on a multicast group identifier. The multicast group identifier is local within the switch.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 21, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2017
    Assignee: BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC.
    Inventors: Venkata R. K. Addanki, Shunjia Yu, Mythilikanth Raman
  • Adaptive link aggregation and virtual link aggregation
    Patent number: 9565113
    Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch comprises a plurality of ports, a link management module, a forwarding module, and a link adaptation module. The link management module operates at least two ports of the plurality of ports of the switch to form a link aggregation. This link aggregation operates as a single logical channel. The forwarding module determines an egress port for a packet among the ports participating in the link aggregation based on a distribution policy. The link adaptation module detects an imbalance of the respective link utilizations among links of the link aggregation based on one or more imbalance criteria, and applies one or more corrective actions to the distribution policy.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 15, 2014
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2017
    Assignee: BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC.
    Inventors: Vardarajan Venkatesh, Ganesh D. Venkata
  • GRACEFUL RECOVERY OF A MULTICAST-ENABLED SWITCH
    Publication number: 20170034047
    Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a processor, a storage device, a multicast management module, and a graceful recovery module. The multicast management module participates in a multicast tree of a multicast group. The graceful recovery module determines a recovery event and constructs a message indicating the recovery event for a second switch. The switch and the second switch belong to a first virtual local area network (VLAN). The graceful recovery module then identifies a completion notification message from the second switch indicating a completion of replaying multicast information stored in the second switch and includes multicast information received from the second switch in a local multicast database.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 8, 2016
    Publication date: February 2, 2017
    Applicant: BROCADE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, INC.
    Inventors: Indranil Bhattacharya, Reshma Sudarshan, Pani A. Durgam
  • Device ID assignment in a system of devices
    Patent number: 9559897
    Abstract: Techniques for assigning device identifiers in a system of devices are provided. In one embodiment, a master device of the system can maintain a first configuration that specifies a set of links between a first subset of the devices, where the first configuration includes a device identifier for each device in the first subset. The master device can further generate a second configuration that specifies a set of links between a second subset of the devices, where the second configuration is based on a physical topology of the system, and where one or more devices in the second subset are unknown devices that are not associated with a device identifier in the physical topology. The master device can then assign device identifiers to the unknown devices in the second subset by comparing the first configuration with the second configuration.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 13, 2013
    Date of Patent: January 31, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Kwun-Nan Kevin Lin, Shafiuddin Mohammed, Ravi Swamy, Shyamsunder Prayagchand Rathi
  • MAC flush optimizations for ethernet rings
    Patent number: 9559863
    Abstract: Techniques are identified for optimizing the MAC flush in Ethernet rings for faster traffic restoration. In one embodiment, flushing of MAC addresses is performed only once on receiving a first control message. For example, when a first control message is received, a network device may switch from a first state to a second state, which may indicate that the MAC addresses are not to be flushed if additional control messages are received. In another embodiment, flushing of MAC addresses is performed on one ring port rather than on both ring ports. For example, a flag field of a control message header may be used to determine on which port to flush. In another embodiment, flushing of MAC addresses is performed on only one ring port of an interconnection node. For example, the ring port can be determined using a flag field and possibly labels associated with the ring ports.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 5, 2013
    Date of Patent: January 31, 2017
    Assignee: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
    Inventor: Sandeep Kulambi