SOFTWARE FIB ARP FEC ENCODING
First Claim
1. A network element comprising:
- a control plane including a forwarding agent;
a data plane coupled to the control plane, the data plane including a forwarding engine to forward a unit of network data from an ingress interface to an egress interface, wherein the forwarding agent is to program the forwarding engine with a forwarding information base having data-link layer forwarding data encoded into a network-layer forwarding entry.
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Abstract
Described herein are various embodiments of a network element to process routing entries in a forwarding information base (FIB) for hosts that are directly attached to a multi-layer network element to encode address resolution protocol (ARP) data into forwarding equivalence class (FEC) entries for the directly attached hosts. One embodiment provides for a network element comprising a control plane including a forwarding agent and a data plane coupled to the control plane. The data plane can include a forwarding engine to forward a unit of network data from an ingress interface to an egress interface. The forwarding agent can be configured to program the forwarding engine with a forwarding information base having data-link layer forwarding data encoded into a network-layer forwarding entry.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A network element comprising:
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a control plane including a forwarding agent; a data plane coupled to the control plane, the data plane including a forwarding engine to forward a unit of network data from an ingress interface to an egress interface, wherein the forwarding agent is to program the forwarding engine with a forwarding information base having data-link layer forwarding data encoded into a network-layer forwarding entry. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
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deriving a layer 3 address from a layer 3 forwarding table entry in a forwarding information base (FIB) of a network element; deriving a layer 2 address from the layer 3 address and a virtual local area network (VLAN) identifier for a VLAN connected to the network element; deriving a physical port from the VLAN identifier and the layer 2 address; and defining a forwarding equivalence class (FEC) entry for the VLAN identifier, layer 2 address, and physical port. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A method of configuring a forwarding engine of a network element, the method comprising:
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deriving a layer 3 address from a layer 3 forwarding table entry in a forwarding information base (FIB) of the network element; deriving a layer 2 address from the layer 3 address and a virtual local area network (VLAN) identifier for a VLAN connected to the network element; deriving a physical port from the VLAN identifier and the layer 2 address; and defining a forwarding equivalence class (FEC) entry for the VLAN identifier, layer 2 address, and physical port. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20)
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Specification