Effective Circuits in Packet-Switched Networks

• US 20120278400A1
• Filed: 04/28/2011
• Published: 11/01/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Elson, Jeremy E., Nightingale, Edmund B.
• Granted Patent: US 9,813,529 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/722 at the destination endpoint, e.g. reservation of terminal resources or buffer space
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/163 In-band adaptation of TCP data exchange; In-band control procedures
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/20 Negotiating bandwidth

Abstract

The creation of an effective circuit between a sender device and a receiver device over the packet-switched network is described herein. To establish the effective circuit, the sender device sends a request to the receiver device through the packet-switched network. The request is associated with a bandwidth reservation from the receiver device for reception of a message from the sender device. The receiver device receives multiple requests from multiple sender devices and reserves bandwidth for at least one of the sender devices. The receiver device then sends a response to the at least one sender device providing clearance to send the message to the receiver device using the reserved bandwidth, the request and response establishing the effective circuit. The receiver device may also decline the requests of the other sender devices, causing the other sender devices to send other requests to other receiver devices.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

sending, by a sender device, a request to a receiver device connected to the sender device by a packet-switched network, the request associated with a bandwidth reservation from the receiver device for reception of a message from the sender device;

receiving, by the sender device, a response from the receiver device providing clearance to send the message to the receiver device using reserved bandwidth of the receiver device, the request and the response creating an effective circuit between the sender device and receiver device over the packet-switched network.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining if another message is a control message or is smaller than a threshold size; and

responsive to determining that the other message is a control message or is smaller than the threshold size, sending the other message to the receiver device without sending a prior request associated with a bandwidth reservation.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising sending multiple requests to multiple receiver devices in parallel.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the sending comprises sending the multiple requests via multiple interfaces of the sender device, the multiple interfaces sharing a same set of message queues and queue states.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising sending the request via one of the multiple interfaces and sending the message via another of the multiple interfaces.

6. The method of claim 3, further comprising limiting the number of requests sent based on an available bandwidth of the sender device.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising checking a timer to determine when to send one or more additional requests, the timer estimating a time to send the message.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising concurrently sending multiple requests for multiple messages to the receiver device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the request indicates a number of messages that the sender device has to send to the receiver device and method further comprises receiving a response providing clearance for some or all of the messages.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the packet-switched network is a full bisection bandwidth network or a high bisection bandwidth network.

11. A sender device comprising:

a processor; and

a network module configured to be operated by the processor to perform operations including;

sending to a first receiver device a first request to send (RTS) a first message, the first RTS seeking a first bandwidth reservation from the first receiver device for reception of the first message from the sender device;

receiving a response from the first receiver device declining the first RTS; and

based on the response, sending a second RTS to a second receiver device, the second RTS seeking a second bandwidth reservation from the second receiver device for reception of a second message from the sender device.

12. The sender device of claim 11, further comprising one or more queues storing messages for transmission to receiver devices.

13. The sender device of claim 12, wherein the one or more queues include a queue for each receiver device, the queues being serviced in a round-robin order.

14. The sender device of claim 12, wherein the network module is further configured to select as the second message from the one or more queues a message in the queues that is not directed to the first receiver device and for which an RTS has not been sent.

15. The sender device of claim 11, wherein the network module is further configured to resend the first RTS to the first receiver device at a later time.

16. One or more computer-readable storage media comprising computer-executable instructions configured to program a receiver device to perform operations including:

receiving a plurality of requests to send messages from a plurality of sender devices;

reserving bandwidth for at least one of the sender devices; and

sending the at least one of the sender devices a response providing clearance to send one or more messages to the receiver device using the reserved bandwidth.

17. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the operations further include sending responses declining requests to others of the sender devices.

18. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein at least one of the requests includes a priority and the requests are ordered for processing based on the priority.

19. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the operations further include tracking a number of times a sender device has been declined and ordering requests for processing based on the tracking.

20. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the requests indicate message sizes and the operations further include reserving bandwidth based on the message sizes.