A system and method for selecting packets to be forwarded from redundant multicast streams. A primary multicast stream and a secondary multicast stream are received, wherein the primary multicast stream and the secondary multicast stream are redundant multicast streams received over disjoint multicast forwarding paths. A hardware-based analyzer in a forwarding plane of the network device is applied to detect when a quality of one of the primary multicast stream or the secondary multicast stream has fallen below a threshold. In response to detecting that a quality of one of the primary multicast stream or the secondary multicast stream has fallen below a threshold, selecting, via a thread executing in a forwarding component of the network device, a different one of the primary multicast stream or the secondary multicast stream having a quality that meets the threshold, wherein selecting includes dynamically rewriting next hop operations associated with the selected stream. Packets received on the selected one of the primary multicast stream or the secondary multicast stream are forwarded and packets of the multicast stream received on the other one of the primary multicast stream or the secondary multicast stream for which the quality has fallen below the threshold are discarded.

Data forwarding method, device, and system are provided for software-defined networking. An SDN control device delivers a proactive flow entry according to network topology information, where the proactive flow entry is unrelated to a service, and instead related to the network topology information. The proactive flow entry may be reused during data forwarding. After data is received, the SDN control device delivers reactive flow entries to some switching devices, where the reactive flow entries are related to the service, but are delivered to a subset of switching devices. This reduces flow entries delivered by the SDN control device to some switching devices, so that occupation of resources of the SDN control device and a switching device by flow entries is reduced.

An interface circuit in an electronic device may receive, from an access point associated with the electronic device, a frame with management information that enables the electronic device to use a spatial-reuse technique, where the electronic device, through the spatial-reuse technique, adjusts a transmit power and a channel-availability sensing threshold. Moreover, the management information may specify parameters for the spatial-reuse technique. Then, the electronic device may transmit, using the spatial-reuse technique, one or more frames to the access point based on the parameters. Furthermore, the electronic device may transmit, to the access point, feedback information that indicates communication performance during the communication between the electronic device and the access point. For example, the feedback information may include a retry rate and, more generally, communication-performance information. This feedback information may be used by the access point to modify the parameters.

A content monitor includes a processor that at least receives requests from a plurality of clients for content, instructs each client to retry their respective request at a first later time if the request is received before a first time, counts the requests to determine if a number of the requests exceeds a threshold if the request is received before a second time, instructs each client to retry their respective request at a second later time if the counted number of requests does not exceed a first threshold, instructs each client to join a multicast group to receive the content when the number of requests exceeds the first threshold, and counts a number of late clients joining the multicast group after a first portion of the content has been sent to the multicast group.

Presented herein is an exemplified system and method that facilitate network-aware orchestration of similar sets of virtualized multicast-traffic receivers and/or sources (e.g., Virtual Machines) under a common network fabric element (e.g., same leaf switch and/or spine switch in a data center network fabric), e.g., to reduce network switch work load and/or number of network fabric elements involved with transmission of multicast traffic. The orchestration of scattered- and like-sets of multicast-traffic receivers and/or sources under a common network fabric element (e.g., a single and same leaf switch and/or spine switch) facilitates improvements of the operation of orchestration management technologies and virtualization overlay technologies by, e.g., improving network efficiency for multicast packet switching, reducing control plane traffic (e.g., IGMP queries), and reducing delay- and packet-transfer errors.

Presented herein is an exemplified system and method that facilitate network-aware orchestration of similar sets of virtualized multicast-traffic receivers and/or sources (e.g., Virtual Machines) under a common network fabric element (e.g., same leaf switch and/or spine switch in a data center network fabric), e.g., to reduce network switch work load and/or number of network fabric elements involved with transmission of multicast traffic. The orchestration of scattered- and like-sets of multicast-traffic receivers and/or sources under a common network fabric element (e.g., a single and same leaf switch and/or spine switch) facilitates improvements of the operation of orchestration management technologies and virtualization overlay technologies by, e.g., improving network efficiency for multicast packet switching, reducing control plane traffic (e.g., IGMP queries), and reducing delay- and packet-transfer errors.

A method and apparatus for implementing a virtual local area network. The method includes determining a global virtual local area network for transmitting a data frame in response to receiving the data frame at a first switch, encapsulating the data frame based at least in part on said determination and transmitting it to at least one second switch over the determined global virtual local area network. The data frame is received at the second switch and an identifier of the global virtual local area network is obtained according to the data frame. Based at least in part on the identifier of the global virtual local area network, it is determined that which local virtual local area network served by the second switch the de-capsulated data frame can be sent to.

Aspects of the present invention include a port extender environment using the port extenders to dynamically select a data path. In embodiments of the present invention, each port extender can communicate data traffic to another port extender or to a host receiver. The communication path is selected in the port extender using a hashing system.

In general, techniques are described for simplifying admission control signaling between subscriber devices, access nodes, and service edge routers to facilitate subscriber-specific admission control for multicast streams. In one example, a service edge router receives a service request and accesses a subscriber profile to determine whether the requesting subscriber is authorized to receive the service. Upon authorization, the service edge router returns the service request to the access node in a substantially similar form in which the service request was received. The access node receives the service request on a service edge router-facing interface, indicating the service edge router has granted authorization for the subscriber device to receive multicast traffic associated with the multicast group identified within the service request. The access node therefore modifies internal mapping tables that determine local elaboration of multicast traffic associated with the multicast group to include an interface to the subscriber device.

A method and device for transmitting a service are disclosed. A terminal device receives position information of specific radio frames in a time unit, and position information of a specific subframe in each of the specific radio frames in the time unit from a base station. Every 2.sup.m radio frames in the time unit include one specific radio frame, the position information of the specific radio frames in the time unit comprises a value of a period of the specific radio frames in the time unit, and a length of the period is 2.sup.m radio frames, where m is a nonnegative integer. The terminal device receives the service carried in the specific subframe in one or more of the specific radio frames from the base station in accordance with the position information of the specific radio frames and the position information of the specific subframe.