Input port routing circuit that performs output port filtering

• US 20040120254A1
• Filed: 12/23/2002
• Published: 06/24/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 12/23/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Rider, Scot H.
• Granted Patent: US 7,342,878 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/231
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

The filtering operations normally performed at the output port side of an Infiniband (or similar protocol) routing switch are performed in parallel at the input side to prevent data packets from being placed on a queue from which they would ordinarily ultimately be discarded, thus removing “bad” packets that would normally have a negative impact on the bandwidth of the switch. Bad data packets thus do not consume space in a central queue nor bandwidth in a crossbar switch.

Claims

1. A method for information packet transmission, said method comprising the steps of:

determining, at an input port, the presence of an output port packet transmission protocol violation from packet header information; and

preventing transmission of said packet to a queue of packets for transmission to at least one output port.

2. The method of claim 1 in which said determining step includes an evaluation of said header information with respect to at least two output port configurations.

3. The method of claim 1 in which said protocol violation is a packet size violation.

4. The method of claim 1 in which said protocol violation is a violation relating to the designation of said packet as a raw packet.

5. The method of claim 1 in which said protocol violation is a partition key violation.

6. The method of claim 1 in which said protocol violation is a violation related to service level to virtual lane translation parameters.

7. A computer readable medium having computer executable instructions for causing a computer to determine, at an input port, the presence of an output port packet transmission protocol violation from packet header information and to prevent transmission of said packet to a queue of packets for transmission to at least one output port.