PACKET RELAY APPARATUS AND METHOD OF RELAYING PACKET

• US 20110176554A1
• Filed: 01/18/2011
• Published: 07/21/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/21/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alaxala Networks Corporation (Fortinet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Alaxala Networks Corporation (Fortinet Inc.)
• Inventors: Hinosugi, Hideki, YAMADA, TAKAHIRO
• Granted Patent: US 8,761,012 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/412
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/17 Interaction among intermediate nodes, e.g. hop by hop
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/29 using a combination of thresholds
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/30 in combination with information about buffer occupancy at either end or at transit nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/32 by discarding or delaying data units, e.g. packets or frames
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/9036 Common buffer combined with individual queues

Abstract

The packet relay apparatus is provided. The packet relay apparatus includes a receiver that receives a packet; and a determiner that determines to drop the received packet without storing the received packet into a queue among the multi-stage queue. The determiner determines to drop the received packet at a latter stage, based on former-stage queue information representing a state of a queue at any former stage which the received packet belongs to and latter-stage queue information representing a state of a queue at the latter stage which the received packet belongs to.

Claims

1. A packet relay apparatus configured to relay a packet by utilizing a multi-stage queue structure, comprising:

a receiver that receives a packet; and

a determiner that determines to drop the received packet without storing the received packet into a queue among the multi-stage queue,

wherein the determiner determines to drop the received packet at a latter stage, based on former-stage queue information representing a state of a queue at any former stage which the received packet belongs to and latter-stage queue information representing a state of a queue at the latter stage which the received packet belongs to.

2. The packet relay apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determiner sets a relation of a packet drop probability to the latter-stage queue information based on the former-stage queue information and determines to drop the received packet, based on a drop probability computed from the latter-stage queue information.

3. The packet relay apparatus according to claim 2, wherein a constant included in a computational expression used for computing the drop probability is set in response to a user'"'"'s instruction.

4. The packet relay apparatus according to claim 2, wherein a computational expression used for computing the drop probability is set in response to a user'"'"'s instruction.

5. The packet relay apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determiner classifies the received packet into one of plural classes based on the former-stage queue information, and determines to drop the received packet, based on a threshold value set in each of the plural classes and the latter-stage queue information.

6. The packet relay apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the former-stage queue information includes a queue length of the queue at any former stage.

7. The packet relay apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the former-stage queue information includes a communication traffic of the queue at any former stage.

8. A method of relaying a packet by utilizing a multi-stage queue structure, comprising:

(a) receiving a packet; and

(b) determining to drop the received packet without storing the received packet into a queue among the multi-stage queue,

wherein the step (b) includes;

determining to drop the received packet at a latter stage, based on former-stage queue information representing a state of a queue at any former stage which the received packet belongs to and latter-stage queue information representing a state of a queue at the latter stage which the received packet belongs to.