Cisco Assigned Two Patents

Bifurcated control and management planes for fiber channel networks
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,699,027) developed by Bharadwaj, Harsha, Varghese, Sunil, and Ghosh, Ankan, Karnataka, India, for a “bifurcated control and management planes for fiber channel networks.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Techniques are provided for bifurcating database information that might otherwise be replicated on each switch in a switched fabric of a Storage Area Network, (SAN). The database is divided into a control plane database that comprises mostly switch specific data and a central management database that comprises user device configurations and device profiles. The control plane database includes information such as name server and zone server information, for those devices that may locally log into the switched fabric via a given switch, and those remote devices that are zoned with those local devices and that may log into the switched fabric via another switch. The central management database includes global information for the switched fabric and device profile information, (e.g., login interface, Virtual SAN membership, device aliasing, etc.) for devices that have access to the switched fabric and that can also be requested by the various switches in the switched fabric.“

The patent application was filed on September 23, 2014 (14/493,498).

Loop detection and repair in multicast tree
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (9,698,994) developed by Pani, Ayaskant, Fremont, CA, for a “loop detection and repair in a multicast tree.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Systems, methods and transitory computer-readable storage media for detecting one or more loops in a multicast tree. The method includes calculating a multicast tree radius for a first multicast tree, the multicast tree radius representing a maximum number of hops from a root node to a furthest edge node in the first multicast tree, forwarding, by the root node, a first packet to each edge node within the first multicast tree, the first packet having a time-to-live, (TTL) value equal to twice the first multicast tree radius, receiving, at the root node, a copy of the forwarded first packet, and determining an existence of a loop in the first multicast tree based at least upon receiving the copy of the forwarded first packet.“

The patent application was filed on July 11, 2014 (14/329,729).