Patent 7106736 Issued on September 12, 2006. Estimated Expiration Date: June 11, 2021. Estimated Expiration Date is calculated based on simple USPTO term provisions. It does not account for terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, failure to pay maintenance fees, or other factors which might affect the term of a patent.
370/391, Switching input signals having different aggregate bit rates370/392, Processing of address header for routing, per se370/398, Centralized switching709/243, Decentralized controlling370/390, Replicate messages for multiple destination distribution370/414, Contention resolution for output370/218, Packet switching system or element370/395.7, Having detail of switch memory reading/writing370/422, Centralized switching370/423, Including a bus for interconnecting inputs and outputs370/401, Bridge or gateway between networks370/389, Switching a message which includes an address header370/395.31, Including routing table370/469Processing multiple layer protocols
A method of handling data packets in a series of network switches is disclosed. An incoming data packet is received at a data port of a first lower capacity switch of the series of network switches and a stack tag is resolved from a header of the incoming data packet. The incoming data packet is forwarded to a first higher capacity switch, on a first stacked connection operating at a first data rate, based on the stack tag. A destination address of said incoming data packet is resolved by the first higher capacity switch and the header of the incoming packet is modified. The incoming data packet is forwarded to a second higher capacity switch, on a second stacked connection operating at a second data rate, based on the resolved destination address, where the header of the incoming data packet is modified and the incoming data packet is forwarded to a second lower capacity switch on a third stacked connection operating at the first data rate. Lastly, an egress port of the second lower capacity switch is determined based on the stack tag and the incoming data packet is forwarded to the egress port. A network switch configured perform the above method of handling data packets is also disclosed.
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June 11, 2021. Estimated Expiration Date is calculated based on simple USPTO term provisions. It does not account for terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, failure to pay maintenance fees, or other factors which might affect the term of a patent.
