Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for interconnecting LANs

US5600644A · kind A · utility

186Cited by
7References
26Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMar 10, 1995
Grant dateFeb 4, 1997
Priority date
Expiry dateMar 10, 2015

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L2012/5619
  • WIPO fieldTelecommunications
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A so-called "ELAN contronect network" is employed to interconnect sub-ELANs to form an ELAN. More specifically, the "ELAN contronect network" is a separate network for interconnecting the servers of the sub-ELANs, where a sub-ELAN is a part of an ELAN having its own LES and BUS that may also be configured as a stand-alone ELAN. Each of the sub-ELANs is connected to the ELAN contronect network via a point-to-point connection-oriented connection, e.g., an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) connection and the ELAN contronect network is configured to present itself to each of the servers of the sub-ELANs as clients thereof. In a particular embodiment of the invention, the ELAN contronect network includes an address server, a broadcast/route server, a configuration server, multimedia servers, and at least one LAN hub interconnected over a high-speed backbone. The address server contains an address data base for performing address resolution between the at least two addresses of each ELAN end-point in response to requests for such translations. The broadcast/route server receives data packets for broadcast to a different sub-ELAN from which the packets originated and broadcasts the receive…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.