Queue management with support for multicasts in an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch
US6219352A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Nov 24, 1997 |
| Grant date | Apr 17, 2001 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Nov 24, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L2012/5681
- WIPO fieldTelecommunications
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
An ATM switch supporting multicast transmissions and efficient transmission of frames. A cell is received on a multicast connection and transmitted on several branches/ports. Instead of copying a multicast cell several times for each output branch, only one copy of each multicast cell is maintained. The cell order and the stored cell data form a physical queue. Several logical queues are maintained, one for each output branch. In one embodiment, linked lists are used to maintain the queues. A cell in the physical queue is deleted after all logical queues traverse that cell. A shared tail pointer is used for all the logical queues to minimize additional processing and memory requirements due to the usage of logical queues. The queues enable cells forming a frame to be buffered until the end of frame cell is received, which provides for efficient handling of frames.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.