Apparatus and method for segmenting a communication network

• US 20070008968A1
• Filed: 06/29/2005
• Published: 01/11/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Chernoguzov, Alexander, Baker, Michael, Massey, W., Gerhart, Paul
• Granted Patent: US 8,259,593 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/390
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1886 with traffic restrictions for efficiency improvement, e.g. involving subnets or subdomains
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/06 Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications

Abstract

A gateway is used to segment a network, such as a Fault Tolerant Ethernet (FTE) network, into islands. The gateway receives traffic from a first island, forwards part of the traffic to a second island, and blocks another part of the traffic from being forwarded to the second island. The forwarded traffic could include unicast traffic. The blocked traffic could include broadcast or multicast traffic, including diagnostic messages from one or more nodes in the first island.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising:

at least two ports capable of receiving traffic from at least a first island and a second island of a network, the received traffic comprising (i) unicast traffic from one or more nodes in the first island, and (ii) at least one of broadcast traffic and multicast traffic comprising diagnostic messages from the one or more nodes in the first island; and

a controller capable of;

forwarding the unicast traffic to the second island; and

blocking at least a portion of the broadcast and multicast diagnostic messages from being forwarded to the second island.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein:

the network comprises a fault tolerant network; and

the apparatus is capable of segmenting the fault tolerant network into the first and second islands without interfering with an ability of the one or more nodes in the first island and one or more nodes in the second island to route the traffic around one or more faults in the network.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein:

the received traffic further comprises (i) unicast traffic from one or more nodes in the second island, and (ii) at least one of broadcast traffic and multicast traffic comprising diagnostic messages from the one or more nodes in the second island; and

the controller is further capable of;

forwarding the unicast traffic received from the second island to the first island; and

blocking at least a portion of the broadcast and multicast diagnostic messages received from the second island from being forwarded to the first island.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the controller is further capable of forwarding one or more maintenance messages from the one or more nodes in the first island to the second island.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein:

the apparatus comprises a first gateway; and

the controller is further capable of rerouting the traffic received from the first island to a second gateway through the first island when communication between the first gateway and the second island fails.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the apparatus is associated with a first network address in the first island and a second network address in the second island.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein:

the first network address comprises an address from an address space of the first island; and

the second network address comprises an index value associated with the apparatus.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein:

the apparatus comprises a first gateway; and

the controller is further capable of forwarding at least part of the unicast traffic to a third island through the second island, the third island associated with a second gateway.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the controller is capable of identifying the second gateway using an index value associated with the second gateway, the index value contained in a destination network address associated with at least part of the unicast traffic.

10. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the controller is capable of forwarding the unicast traffic by replacing a medium access control (MAC) address in the unicast traffic with one of:

a MAC address of a destination for the unicast traffic; and

a MAC address of the second gateway.

11. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein:

the one or more nodes comprise switches in the first island; and

the traffic comprises Internet Protocol packets.

12. A method, comprising:

receiving traffic from one or more nodes in a first island of a network, the received traffic comprising (i) unicast traffic from the one or more nodes in the first island, and (ii) at least one of broadcast traffic and multicast traffic comprising diagnostic messages from the one or more nodes in the first island;

forwarding the unicast traffic to a second island in the network; and

blocking at least a portion of the broadcast and multicast diagnostic messages from being forwarded to the second island.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein:

the network comprises a fault tolerant network; and

the fault tolerant network is segmented into the first and second islands without interfering with an ability of the one or more nodes in the first island and one or more nodes in the second island to route the traffic around one or more faults in the network.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

receiving second traffic from one or more nodes in the second island, the second traffic comprising (i) unicast traffic from the one or more nodes in the second island, and (ii) at least one of broadcast traffic and multicast traffic comprising diagnostic messages from the one or more nodes in the second island;

forwarding the unicast traffic received from the second island to the first island; and

blocking at least a portion of the broadcast and multicast diagnostic messages received from the second island from being forwarded to the first island.

15. The method of claim 12, further comprising forwarding network time protocol traffic and simple network management protocol traffic from the one or more nodes in the first island to the second island.

16. The method of claim 12, further comprising identifying one or more faults in the network using the diagnostic messages.

17. The method of claim 12, wherein forwarding the unicast traffic comprises performing port filtering to allow only authorized traffic to enter the second island.

18. The method of claim 12, wherein a first gateway performs the receiving, forwarding, and blocking;

and

further comprising exchanging information with a second gateway through at least one of the first and second islands, the second gateway capable of performing the receiving, forwarding, and blocking upon a failure of the first gateway.

19. A computer program embodied on a computer readable medium and operable to be executed by a processor, the computer program comprising computer readable program code for:

receiving traffic from one or more nodes in a first island of a network, the received traffic comprising (i) unicast traffic from the one or more nodes in the first island, and (ii) at least one of broadcast traffic and multicast traffic comprising diagnostic messages from the one or more nodes in the first island;

forwarding the unicast traffic to a second island in the network; and

blocking at least a portion of the broadcast and multicast diagnostic messages from being forwarded to the second island.

20. The computer program of claim 19, wherein:

the network comprises a fault tolerant network; and

the fault tolerant network is segmented into the first and second islands without interfering with an ability of the one or more nodes in the first island and one or more nodes in the second island to route the traffic around one or more faults in the network.

21. The computer program of claim 19, further comprising computer readable program code for:

receiving second traffic from one or more nodes in the second island, the second traffic comprising (i) unicast traffic from the one or more nodes in the second island, and (ii) at least one of broadcast traffic and multicast traffic comprising diagnostic messages from the one or more nodes in the second island;

forwarding the unicast traffic received from the second island to the first island; and

blocking at least a portion of the broadcast and multicast diagnostic messages received from the second island from being forwarded to the first island.

22. The computer program of claim 19, wherein:

the computer program is executed by a gateway; and

a status of one or more nodes in the second island is proxied by a gateway.

23. The computer program of claim 19, wherein the computer readable program code for forwarding the unicast traffic comprises computer readable program code for replacing a medium access control (MAC) address in the unicast traffic with a different MAC address.

24. The computer program of claim 19, further comprising computer readable program code for:

generating one or more additional diagnostic messages; and

communicating the one or more additional diagnostic messages to at least one node in the first island and at least one node in the second island.

25. The computer program of claim 24, wherein:

the computer program is executed by a first gateway; and

the computer readable program code for generating the one or more additional diagnostic messages comprises computer readable program code for generating the one or more additional diagnostic messages using information from a second gateway.