This application discloses a packet processing method and a Label Switching Router (LSR). The method includes receiving, by an Ingress LSR of a first Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) tunnel, a first notification packet that is based on an IGP, where the first notification packet includes an Entropy Label Capability (ELC) flag indicating that the first Egress LSR has ELC. The method further includes, after learning from the first notification packet that the first Egress LSR has ELC, inserting a label into a first packet, to generate a second packet. The label forms an MPLS label stack, which includes, from bottom to top, a first EL, a first ELI, and a first TL. The method further includes sending the second packet to the first Egress LSR through the first MPLS tunnel.

In general, techniques are described for maintaining coherency in distributed operating systems for network devices. A network device comprising hardware computing nodes may be configured to perform the techniques. The hardware computing nodes may execute a distributed operating system. At least one the hardware computing nodes may determine whether one or more of the plurality of hardware computing nodes has failed and is no longer supporting execution of the distributed operating system, and determine whether remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes exceeds a quorum threshold. The at least one of the hardware computing nodes may further restart, when the remaining ones of the plurality of hardware computing nodes is less than the quorum threshold, the distributed operating system.

In an example, a method for forwarding packet is applied to a port extender (PE) device within a PE stack system. In a case that the PE device receives a packet from a local ingress port of the PE device, the PE device may determine the local egress port corresponding to the local ingress port by looking up a local forwarding entry according to the local ingress port, and then forward the packet via the local egress port.

Various examples provide a method and apparatus of generating a system port identity. According to the method, a member device may determine a value c which is the number of unit IDs to be allocated to a chip in an interface board of the member device, c is larger than 1; generate a system port identity which identifies a port in the stack for each of plural first ports of the chip using a first unit ID of the c unit IDs; generate a system port identity for each of plural second ports of the chip other than the first ports using a second unit ID of the c unit IDs.

This application discloses a packet processing method and an LSR. The method includes: receiving, by an Ingress LSR of a first MPLS tunnel, a first notification packet that is based on an IGP, where the first notification packet includes an ELC flag, which is used to indicate that the first Egress LSR has ELC; after learning from the first notification packet that the first Egress LSR has ELC, inserting a label into a first packet, to generate a second packet, where the label forms an MPLS label stack, which includes, from bottom to top, a first EL, a first ELI, and a first TL; and sending the second packet to the first Egress LSR through the first MPLS tunnel. According to the solutions of this invention, a Transit LSR of the first MPLS tunnel may perform load balancing when forwarding the second packet.

In general, techniques are described in which a plurality of network switches automatically configure themselves to operate as a single virtual network switch. A virtual switch is a collection of individual switch devices that operate like as single network switch. As described herein, network switches in a network that are capable of participating in a virtual switch may automatically discover one another. The participating network switches may then elect one of the participating switches as a master switch. The master switch may generate forwarding information and store the forwarding information in the participating switches, including the master switch. The forwarding information causes the participating switches to act like a single network switch.

The present invention provides a communication network comprising a host network, a plurality of base stations, at least a mobile host capable of establishing links to the base stations, and a hierarchy-network of plural routers which are improved in transferring performances for ensuring continuous operations with a reduced load without packet loss.

A system and method for electing a master switch includes a management port for coupling a first switch to a management system, a plurality of stacking ports for coupling the first switch to other switches in a stacked switch, and a control unit. The control unit detects one or more first connectivity settings of the management port, exchanges the first connectivity settings with the other switches using at least one of the stacking ports, exchanges second connectivity settings for the other switches using the stacking ports, and elects a master switch for the stacked switch based on the first and second connectivity settings. In some embodiments, the control unit further receives a first management configuration from the management system, exchanges the first management configuration with the other switches, exchanges second management configurations of the other switches, and further elects the master switch based on the first and second management configurations.

In one embodiment, a method includes sending a switch discovery signal to one or more of a plurality of switches, receiving a reply to the switch discovery signal from the one or more of the plurality of switches, each reply comprising a switch identifier (ID) and a quantity of ports, receiving configuration information identifying at least one virtual stack to create, determining a virtual topology for the at least one virtual stack based on the configuration information, creating a first virtual stack of the at least one virtual stack by assigning at least one switch port of a source switch to the first virtual stack of the at least one virtual stack in accordance with the configuration information, and storing the virtual topology in a mapping table local to a computer comprising the first computer processor.

An apparatus and method for extending the scalability and improving the partitionability of networks that contain all-to-all links for transporting packet traffic from a source endpoint to a destination endpoint with low per-endpoint (per-server) cost and a small number of hops. An all-to-all wiring in the baseline topology is decomposed into smaller all-to-all components in which each smaller all-to-all connection is replaced with star topology by using global switches. Stacking multiple copies of the star topology baseline network creates a multi-planed switching topology for transporting packet traffic. Point-to-point unified stacking method using global switch wiring methods connects multiple planes of a baseline topology by using the global switches to create a large network size with a low number of hops, i.e., low network latency. Grouped unified stacking method increases the scalability (network size) of a stacked topology.