This disclosure relates to a method of improving switching capacity in a software-based network switch. The method may involve storing a data packet in a first local buffer, storing one or more header fields of the data packet in a second local buffer. A common identifier may be assigned to the data packet stored in the first local buffer and the one or more header fields stored in the second local buffer. The one or more header fields may be directly sent from the NIC to the CPU for the data packet processing. At least one header field of the one or more header fields may be modified by the CPU. Further, the one or more header fields may be overwritten with the at least one modified header field in the data packet stored in the first local buffer of the NIC based on the common identifier.

In one embodiment, a network device includes multiple ports to be connected to a packet data network so as to serve as both ingress and egress ports in receiving and forwarding of data packets including unicast and multicast data packets, a memory coupled to the ports and to contain a combined unicast-multicast user-pool storing the received unicast and multicast data packets, and packet processing logic to compute a combined unicast-multicast user-pool free-space based on counting only once at least some of the multicast packets stored once in the combined unicast-multicast user-pool, compute an occupancy of an egress queue by counting a space used by the data packets of the egress queue in the combined unicast-multicast user-pool, apply an admission policy to a received data packet for entry into the egress queue based on at least the computed occupancy of the egress queue and the computed combined unicast-multicast user-pool free-space.

A traffic manager is shared amongst two or more egress blocks of a network device, thereby allowing traffic management resources to be shared between the egress blocks. Among other aspects, this may reduce power demands and allow a larger amount of buffer memory to be available to a given egress block that may be experiencing high traffic loads. Optionally, the shared traffic manager may be leveraged to reduce the resources required to handle data units on ingress. Rather than buffer the entire unit in the ingress buffers, an arbiter may be configured to buffer only the control portion of the data unit. The payload of the data unit, by contrast, is forwarded directly to the shared traffic manager, where it is placed in the egress buffers. Because the payload is not being buffered in the ingress buffers, the ingress buffer memory may be greatly reduced.

A method, a communication device, a computer program, and a computer program product for cyclic time-slotted operation in a wireless industrial network. The communication device includes a memory having a first memory area and a second memory area. The method includes running an application software at application layer. The application software is associated with a first pointer. The method includes operating a communication hardware at physical layer. The communication hardware is associated with a second pointer. The first pointer and the second pointer in a given timeslot point at a respective different one of the memory areas, such that in the given timeslot the application software is enabled to access one of the memory areas and the communication hardware is enabled to access the other of the memory areas. The method includes swapping the pointers to the memory areas at the end of each cycle of the cyclic time-slotted operation

An apparatus for interfacing with a circuit switched network may be configured to detect when a data carrier signal from a circuit switched network is offline. While the data carrier signal from the circuit switched network is offline, the apparatus may send, to a network element coupled with the circuit switched network via the apparatus, control packets indicating that the data carrier signal is offline. The apparatus may further maintain an active data carrier signal between the apparatus and the network device by sending, to the network element, protocol idle frames. The apparatus may buffer, at the apparatus, packets sent from the network element to the circuit switched network. Once the data carrier signal is restored, the apparatus may send, to the circuit switched network, control packets indicating that the data carrier signal is online and the packet buffered at the apparatus while the data carrier signal is offline.

Some embodiments provide a method for a hardware forwarding element. The method adds a received packet to a buffer. The method determines whether adding the packet to the buffer causes the buffer to pass one of multiple flow control thresholds, each of which corresponds to a different packet priority. When adding the packet to the buffer causes the buffer to pass a particular flow control threshold corresponding to a particular priority, the method generates a flow control message for the particular priority.

Provided are a sharing method and apparatus. The method acquires the first transmission parameter and the number of first channels supported by one network mode; calculates and obtains the first storage parameter corresponding to the one network mode according to the number of the first channels, the first transmission parameter and a preset calculation model; determines the first storage area satisfying the first storage parameter, and allocates the storage space for the first channels according to the first storage area. Further provided is a terminal.

A switch architecture enables ports to stash packets in unused buffers on other ports, exploiting excess internal bandwidth that may exist, for example, in a tiled switch. This architecture leverages unused port buffer memory to improve features such as congestion handling and error recovery.

A memory sub-system connectable to a microprocessor to provide network storage services. The memory sub-system has a random-access memory configured with: first queues for the microprocessor and a network interface; second queues for the microprocessor and a processing device; and third queues for the processing device and a storage device. The processing device is configured to: generate first control messages and first data messages from packets received by the network interface; place the first control messages into the first queues for the microprocessor; and place the first data messages into the third queues for the storage device. The microprocessor processes the first control messages to implement security and administrative functions and place second control messages in the second queues. The storage device is configured to retrieve the first data messages from the third queues and second control messages from the second queues for processing.

In a packet network of ingress nodes and egress nodes connected by a fabric transmit queues are associated with a hash table that stores packet descriptors. When new packets are received in the ingress nodes, credits are obtained from the egress nodes that reflect capacities of the transmit queues to accommodate the new packets. The credits are consumed by transmitting at least a portion of the new packets from the ingress nodes to the egress nodes via the fabric and storing descriptors of the new packets in a hash table. In order to transmit the packets in order by sequence number, when a desired packet sequence number is found by a hash lookup, the new packet having that sequence number is forwarded through the egress nodes.