Epoch-based packet switching
US7154902B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Oct 21, 2002 |
| Grant date | Dec 26, 2006 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 9, 2025 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L49/1523
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A high-speed router and method for operation of the core of such a router are disclosed. A switch fabric serves a plurality of ingress and egress ports. Packets are sorted into queues at each ingress port, each queue corresponding to one of the egress ports. Queue status information for each ingress port is communicated to a central scheduler. The scheduler reconfigures the switch fabric to a new port mapping once per epoch, where an epoch is long enough to allow each ingress port to transmit a large plurality of queued packets. The scheduler also sends port mapping information to the ingress ports, so that those ports can match one of their queues with the egress port mapping for each epoch. The switch fabric can achieve extremely high throughput since it doesn't recognize and switch packets per se, but deals with large multi-packet blocks that can be efficiently scheduled by the central scheduler.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.