The present invention is provides a method and apparatus for routing a data packet in a network. For each nearby device capable of routing the packet toward a further destination, an associated cost or utility is determined. The device with lowest cost or highest utility is selected and the packet is forwarded toward same. The selecting may use a comparator tree. The cost or utility may be associated with forwarding the data packet from the candidate device toward the further destination. The cost or utility may be based on a distance from candidate device to the further destination, and may be determined using a Haversine function or approximation thereof, or by computing an inner product of a first vector and a second vector originating at a center of Earth, the first vector directed toward the candidate device, the second vector directed toward the further destination.

The invention relates to an industrial testing device communicating with a data center located in a remote computer network, such as the cloud. Disclosed is a method of registering the device to the cloud and specifying the geographical location of the data center. The method includes selecting a data center from a list of available data centers based on regulations specific to a device type of the industrial testing device. Features are configured for communication between the device and the selected data center.

A method for locality-based selection and routing of network traffic to producer network functions (NFs) includes registering, by producer NFs, locality information with a network function registration function (NRF). The method further includes configuring, for each of a plurality of consumer NFs, locality preference rules. The method further includes detecting, by one of the consumer NFs, a need for a service provided by a plurality of different producer NFs, at least some of which are located in data centers with different localities. The method further includes selecting, by or on behalf of the one consumer NF and using the locality information registered for the producer NFs and the locality preference rules, a producer NF for providing the service to the one consumer NF.

Some embodiments provide a method of implementing context-aware routing for a software-defined wide-area network, at an SD-WAN edge forwarding element (FE) located at a branch network connected to the SD-WAN. The method receives, from an SD-WAN controller, geolocation route weights for each of multiple cloud datacenters across which a set of application resources is distributed. The application resources are all reachable at a same virtual network address. For each of the cloud datacenters, the method installs a route for the virtual network address between the branch network and the cloud datacenter. The routes have different total costs based at least in part on the geolocation metrics received from the SD-WAN controller. The SD-WAN edge FE selects between the routes to establish connections to the set of application resources.

The invention is directed to a computer-implemented system and method for transmitting data from a first node to a second node of a source-selected path routing network. In said system and method according to the present invention, a first data packet is received at the first node, wherein said data packet was sent from a source node according to next-hop routing. Subsequently, at least part of the data contained in the data packet is transmitted from the first node to the second node according to source-selected path routing. Finally, the data received at the second node is transmitted to a destination node according to next-hop routing. Said system and method is further characterized by the steps of determining, for at least a subset of a plurality of available paths between the first node and the second node, a plurality of path parameters; determining a plurality of attributes related to the first data packet; selecting a preferred path from the plurality of available paths based on a decision rule, said decision rule specifying, for at least one attribute, a preferred range of path parameters; and remotely determining the second node based on destination information related to the destination node, wherein said destination information is extracted from the data packet.

A packet processing system having each of a plurality of hierarchical clients and a packet memory arbiter serially communicatively coupled together via a plurality of primary interfaces thereby forming a unidirectional client chain. This chain is then able to be utilized by all of the hierarchical clients to write the packet data to or read the packet data from the packet memory.

A method for determining a path computation element and a communications device are provided, where location information and transmission capability information of a PCE are carried in a route advertisement message and are advertised to a PCC, so that the PCC can select, according to the transmission capability information of the PCE in the route advertisement message, a PCE that meets a transmission capability of the PCC, to perform path computation; therefore, a problem that a transmission capability mismatch between the PCC and the PCE causes a failure in establishing a PCEP session is avoided.

Systems and methods are described to enable and manage the use of origin-facing points of presence (“POPs”) within a content delivery network (“CDN”). Origin-facing POPs can provide a second-tier caching mechanisms in a CDN, such that cache misses occurring at first-tier POPs may be processed by using information maintained at the origin-facing POPs, rather than requiring interaction with an origin server. Associations between origin-facing POPs and origin servers may be automatically created based on a distance between the respective origin-facing POPs and origin servers, such that an operator of the origin server is not required to specify a location of an origin facing POP. First-tier POPs may selectively retrieve content from origin-facing POPs in instances where the origin-facing POP is expected to provide the content more rapidly than the origin server.

A packet processing system having each of a plurality of hierarchical clients and a packet memory arbiter serially communicatively coupled together via a plurality of primary interfaces thereby forming a unidirectional client chain. This chain is then able to be utilized by all of the hierarchical clients to write the packet data to or read the packet data from the packet memory.

One or more embodiments of the invention may relate to a method, and/or non-transitory computer readable medium including instructions, for distributing link state information. In one or more embodiments of the invention, the method includes building a link state database on a plurality of network devices; electing a leader from among the plurality of network devices; computing, by the leader, a flooding topology; encoding, by the leader, the flooding topology to obtain an encoded flooding topology; distributing, by the leader, the encoded flooding topology to other network devices of the plurality of network devices.