Patents by Inventor Mark Christian Rudolph

Mark Christian Rudolph has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Systems and methods for disseminating addresses in distributed switching environments
    Patent number: 9319317
    Abstract: In a distributed switching environment, a plurality of switches are clustered together to form a stack, and it is generally desirable for forwarding tables, such as MAC tables, to be synchronized so that their mappings are consistent. When a switch receives a packet having a source address (e.g., MAC address) that is unknown, the switch is configured to disseminate the source address to the other switches of the stack. Rather than using software protocols to disseminate the source address, the switch instead transmits a multicast packet that (1) includes the unknown source address and (2) spoofs the other switches into believing that the packet was received on the same port from which the unknown source address was received on ingress to the stack. Thus, the other switches learn the unknown source address in hardware without having to rely on software for updating their forwarding tables.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2014
    Date of Patent: April 19, 2016
    Assignee: ADTRAN, Inc.
    Inventors: Derek Martin Spadaro, Mark Christian Rudolph, Timothy James Schlichter