Multiplex communications – Fault recovery
Patent
1997-07-08
2000-11-21
Ton, Dang
Multiplex communications
Fault recovery
H04J 324
Patent
active
061512974
ABSTRACT:
A method and system are provided for trunking multiple links between a switch and a server. Server drivers recognize and automatically configure additional installed network interface cards (NICs) or multi-port NICs as group members. A monolithic driver, or an overlaying driver shim makes the group of NICs appear to be a single NIC to the server operating system and clients. Multiple NICs having the same MAC address and appearing on different ports are connected directly to a switch which treats the group as a single logical port. Using a deterministic algorithm, the switch looks up a received packet's destination in the address table. A list of possible ports for reaching the server and a flag indicating that the server is to be reached via this trunked group of ports are retrieved. The switch selects a port based upon the packet's source address. On the trunk to the clients, the server driver performs the same deterministic algorithm on the destination addresses. The invention supports fault tolerance. In one embodiment, a single switch is connected to a server via multiple NIC links. In another embodiment, the server is connected via multiple NIC links to a plurality of switches. To mitigate effects of the same source MAC address appearing on packets received from multiple ports in a group, the switch is notified that it is acceptable to see the server's MAC address appearing on several ports and is directed not to notify the system operator thereof.
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Congdon Paul
Krelle Brian
Hewlett--Packard Company
Ton Dang
LandOfFree
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