A first forwarding VM may execute in a first availability zone and have a first IP address. Similarly, a second forwarding VM may execute in a second availability zone and have a second IP address. The first and second IP addresses may be recorded with a cloud DNS web service of a cloud provider such that both receive requests from applications directed to a particular DNS name acting as a single endpoint. A service cluster may include a master VM node and a standby VM node. An IPtable in each forwarding VM may forward a request having a port value to a cluster port value associated with the master VM node. Upon a failure of the master VM node, the current standby VM node may be promoted to execute in master mode and the IPtables may be updated to now forward requests having the port value to a cluster port value associated with the newly promoted master VM node (which was previously the standby VM node).

The present invention relates to communications methods, apparatus and systems for providing media micro-services in a scalable and efficient manner. In an exemplary method embodiment, a packet plane control service entity performs the following operations: (i) receives a request from a Signaling-Session Border Controller to implement one or more micro-services on a media packet stream, the request including information about the media packet stream including stream identification information; generates instructions for one or more entities under the control of the packet plane control service entity to implement the requested one or more micro-services on the media packet stream; and communicates the generated instructions to the one or more entities under the control of the packet plane control service entity for implementation on the media packet stream.

A network switch subrack in a cabinet system is configured to bear a network switch. The network switch subrack includes an outer frame that is configured to be plugged into the cabinet. The outer frame includes a cavity sized to accommodate the network switch. The network switch subrack further includes a fastening assembly that is disposed in the outer frame and configured to fasten the network switch in the cavity in the outer frame. The network switch subrack further includes a transfer module having a first end pluggably connected to the cabinet system and a second end pluggably connected to the network switch.

Packets received by a network switch device from upstream network devices, coupled to respective ones of a plurality of ports of the network switch device, are temporarily stored in an internal memory of the network switch device. In response to detecting congestion in the internal memory of the network switch device, a flow control engine triggers, during respective timeslots of a timing schedule and while the flow control engine continues to monitor congestion in the internal memory of the network switch device, transmission of respective flow control messages via different subsets of ports, among the plurality of ports, to control flow of packets from different subsets of upstream network device, among the plurality of upstream network devices, to the network switch device so that flow control is distributed over time among upstream network devices of the plurality of upstream network devices.

An aspect of the present invention provides an input/output switch including: a plurality of virtual switches formed by asymmetrically divided switches with symmetrically aligned ports; and ports on a side of end points and ports on a side of an intermediate switch allocated for each of the virtual switches, in which some of the ports of the virtual switches on the side of the end points act as ports that form a path that returns traffic among the virtual switches.

A network interface device has data path circuitry configured to cause data to be moved into and/or out of the network interface device. The data path circuitry comprises: first circuitry for providing one or more data processing operations; and interface circuitry supporting channels. The channels comprises command channels receiving command information from a plurality of data path circuitry user instances, event channels providing respective command completion information to the plurality of data path user instances; and data channels providing the associated data.

A network appliance can continue operation at a degraded level during an upgrade that requires less free pipeline memory than other upgrade techniques. The network appliance has a control plane and has a data plane with a packet processing pipeline circuit. Before the upgrade, the control plane has configured the packet processing pipeline circuit to process a network flow. The packet processing pipeline may be halted in order to perform a pipeline upgrade during which the packet processing pipeline circuit's pipeline memory is cleared. The packet processing pipeline circuit is restarted after the pipeline upgrade after which the control plane can reconfigure the packet processing pipeline circuit to process the network flow. The packet processing pipeline circuit can therefore process the network flow after the pipeline upgrade.

Switches for performing packet switching and associated methods are provided. An example switch includes an ingress port for receiving a packet. The switch includes a plurality of egress ports for discharging the packet from the switch. The switch includes a plurality of egress queues with each egress queue associated with one of the plurality of egress ports. The switch includes a control plane configured to determine a descriptor associated with a packet, determine a first egress port from which to discharge the at least one packet and to transmit the descriptor to an egress queue associated with the first egress port. The switch includes a descriptor crossbar configured to transmit the descriptor from the egress queue to a second egress port of the plurality of egress ports. The switch includes a packet crossbar configured to transmit the at least one packet from the ingress port to the second egress port.

A switching system comprises a controlling switch and a plurality of port extenders. One of the port extenders includes: at least one upstream port; multiple downstream ports; and a forwarding engine. A forwarding database is populated with entries indicating associations between i) respective network addresses corresponding to devices coupled to downstream ports, and ii) respective local downstream ports. The forwarding database excludes entries corresponding to network addresses corresponding to devices coupled to the at least one upstream port. The forwarding engine is configured to: for a first packet received via one of the local downstream ports, and having a destination network address in the forwarding database, forward the first packet to a different local downstream port indicated by the forwarding database. For a second packet received via one of the local downstream ports, and having a destination network address not in the forwarding database, forward the second packet to the at least one upstream port.

Some embodiments provide a network forwarding IC with packet processing pipelines, at least one of which includes a parser, a set of match-action stages, and a deparser. The parser is configured to receive a packet and generate a PHV including a first number of data containers storing data for the packet. A first match-action stage is configured to receive the PHV from the parser and expand the PHV to a second, larger number of data containers storing data for the packet. Each of a set of intermediate match-action stage is configured to receive the expanded PHV from a previous stage and provide the expanded PHV to a subsequent stage. A final match-action stage is configured to receive the expanded PHV and reduce the PHV to the first number of data containers. The deparser is configured to receive the reduced PHV from the final match-action stage and reconstruct the packet.