Network packet steering

• US 20030223418A1
• Filed: 06/04/2002
• Published: 12/04/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/04/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Fortinet Inc.
• Inventors: Millet, Tim, Kim, Paul, Hussain, Zahid, Desai, Sachin, Yeung, Louise, Yeung, Ken
• Granted Patent: US 7,203,192 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/389
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4625 Single bridge functionality, e.g. connection of two networks over a single bridge
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/10 Flow control; Congestion control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/22 Traffic shaping
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2441 relying on flow classification, e.g. using integrated services [IntServ]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2491 Mapping quality of service [QoS] requirements between different networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/254 Centralised controller, i.e. arbitration or scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/30 Peripheral units, e.g. input or output ports
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/65 Re-configuration of fast packet switches

Abstract

Methods and Systems are provided for steering network packets and bridging media channels to a single processing resource. A mapping associates a processing resource with a network interface module (Netmod) or a number of line interface ports included within the Netmod. In one embodiment, the mapping is configurable within the processing resource and pushed to the Netmod. The Netmod uses the mapping to steer network packets to the processing resource when the packets conform to the mapping. Moreover, the mapping can be used to identify a specific process that is to be performed against the packets once the processing resource receives the steered packets from the Netmod.

Claims

1. A method to steer a network packet, comprising:

receiving a unique identifier for a processing resource;

receiving a mapping that associates the unique identifier with a network interface or one or more components of the network interface; and

providing the mapping to the network interface, wherein the mapping is used by the network interface to steer the network packet when the network packet conforms to the mapping.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein in receiving the unique identifier, the unique identifier is configurable and received from a Graphical User Interface (GUI).

3. The method of claim 1, wherein in receiving the mapping, the mapping is represented as a table data structure before being provided to the network interface.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein in receiving the mapping, a processing and memory capacity of the processing resource are published.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein in receiving the mapping, the one or more components of the network interface are line interface ports to the network interface.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein in providing the mapping, the mapping is dynamically pushed from the processing resource to the network interface and the mapping represents a virtual switch.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein in receiving the unique identifier, the processing resource is at least one of a network packet forwarding resource, a network packet encryption/decryption resource, and a network packet authentication resource.

8. A network packet steering system, comprising:

one or more processing resources;

one or more network interfaces; and

wherein the one or more processing resources are configurable, uniquely identified, and assigned to a number of the network interfaces or to a number of line interface ports associated with one of the network interfaces, and wherein the one or more network interfaces steer an incoming network packet to one of the processing resources using the configured assignment.

9. The network packet steering system of claim 8, wherein the configured assignment is provided by one or more of the processing resources to one or more of the network interfaces, and the configured assignment is represented as a table data structure within a volatile memory of the one or more network interfaces.

10. The network packet steering system of claim 8, wherein one or more of the network interfaces uses the configured assignment to process one of more filter operations on the incoming network packet before steering the packet.

11. The network packet steering system of claim 10, wherein the one or more filter operations are used to detect at least one of a current volume of network traffic, a content format of the incoming network packet, and a context within which the incoming network packet is received.

12. The network packet steering system of claim 8, wherein the configured assignment is based on the processing capabilities of the one or more processing resources.

13. The network packet steering system of claim 8, wherein the one or more network interfaces are at least one of a Frame Relay (FR), Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Gigabit Ethernet (GigE), and wireless.

14. A network interface steering table data structure residing on a computer readable medium, comprising:

a plurality of interface identifiers;

a plurality of sub-interface identifiers associated with each interface identifier; and

wherein when a packet is received by a network interface, the packet is indexed into the data structure based on the interface identifier of the network interface receiving the packet and the sub-interface identifier associated with the line interface port of the network interface providing the packet, and the indexed data structure provides an address to a processing resource where the packet is to be steered and a pointer to a specific process within the processing resource that is used to process the packet.

15. The steering table data structure of claim 14, wherein data structure is created by an interface associated with the processing resource.

16. The steering table data structure of claim 15, wherein the data structure is pushed from the processing resource to the network interface.

17. The steering table data structure of claim 16, wherein data structure is pushed to a Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) of the network interface.

18. The steering table data structure of claim 14, wherein the specific process is at least one of a packet forwarding process, a packet routing process, a packet authentication process, and a packet encryption/decryption process.

19. The steering table data structure of claim 14, wherein the pointer is an identifier used on the processing resource to acquire the specific processing resource to process the packet.

20. The steering table data structure of claim 14, wherein the network interface uses the address and the pointer to steer the packet to the processing resource and have the specific process performed against the packet on the processing resource.