The present invention provides a method of preserving packet ordering in a multipath network having a plurality of network elements interconnected by network links wherein for each data packet arriving at an egress port of the multi-path network, a delivery acknowledgement is issued by the egress port and is transmitted across the network following in reverse the path taken by the data packet being acknowledged. The state of each link in the path taken by the data packet being acknowledged is updated by the acknowledgement. The present invention further provides a multi-path network for use in a bridge, switch, router, hub or the like, the multi-path network comprising a plurality of network ports; a plurality of network elements; and a plurality of network links interconnecting the network elements and the network ports for transporting data packets, each network egress port including an acknowledgement mechanism for issuing a delivery acknowledgement in response to receipt of a data packet and each network element being adapted to transmitted a delivery acknowledgment in the opposite direction along the path taken by the data packet being acknowledged and being further adapted to update the state of at least one of the network links to which it is connected in response to receipt of an acknowledgement. The invention further provides an Ethernet bridge or router incorporating such a multi-path network.

A method for providing bidirectional communication between segments of a home network includes receiving a first communication signal at a first interface of an inter-domain bridge during a first time interval; receiving a second communication signal at a second interface of the inter-domain bridge during the first time interval; generating a superimposed signal of the first communication signal and the second communication signal; and transmitting the superimposed signal through the first interface and the second interface during a second time interval. The second time interval occurs after the first time interval.

The present invention provides a method for receiving information, a method for sending information, and apparatuses for the same. The method for receiving information includes: when a control plane apparatus is capable of managing a forwarding plane apparatus, receiving, by the forwarding plane apparatus, information used for packet forwarding path calculation sent by the control plane apparatus, where the forwarding plane apparatus and the control plane apparatus are located in a network with a network architecture featuring forwarding and control element separation. According to the technical solutions provided in embodiments of the present invention, the forwarding plane apparatus does not need to actively obtain the information used for packet forwarding path calculation before calculating a packet forwarding path based on the information used for packet forwarding path calculation.

Techniques are presented for distributing host route information of virtual machines to routing bridges (RBridges). A first RBridge receives a routing message that is associated with a virtual machine and is sent by a second RBridge. The routing message comprises of mobility attribute information associated with a mobility characteristic of the virtual machine obtained from an egress RBridge that distributes the routing message. The first RBridge adds a forwarding table attribute to the routing message that indicates whether or not the first RBridge has host route information associated with the virtual machine in a forwarding table of the first RBridge. The first RBridge also distributes the routing message including the mobility attribute information and the forwarding table attribute, to one or more RBridges in the network.

In one embodiment, an exploratory linktrace is initiated from an initiating network device with an exploratory linktrace message (ELM) having a target address. Each network device receiving the ELM may then propagate the ELM on a plurality of its ports to a plurality of downstream network devices based on the target address. In addition, each receiving network device returns an exploratory linktrace reply (ELR) for each of the plurality of ports, where each ELR is returned according to one or more mechanisms to mitigate stormed replies to the initiating network device.

In one embodiment, when an ingress provider edge (PE) device of a computer network domain receives a frame at the ingress PE device destined to a destination media access control (MAC) address, it can determine whether the frame was received on a root or leaf Ethernet ingress segment, and also whether the destination MAC address is located via a root or leaf Ethernet segment. Accordingly, the ingress PE device may either drop or forward the frame based on the ingress Ethernet segment and destination MAC address Ethernet segment being either a root or a leaf, respectively.

Apparatuses and methods are disclosed for managing network connections. A computing device accesses a request to provision a network connection associated with a first device. The request includes a plurality of connection parameters defining desired specifications for a network connection from the first device to a second device. The connection parameters are validated against information from a database and other predetermined rules. A network connection path is generated to connect the first device with the second device. The network connection path is generated by selecting network elements for the network connection that satisfy the connection parameters. Configuration information for the network elements of the network connection path is aggregated for a configuration system. The configuration information is used to provision the network connection.

The present document discloses a method, apparatus and system for managing a TRILL network by a layer-3 network manager. Herein, the method includes: associating a target RB in the TRILL network with an interface of a layer-3 VLAN, publishing the layer-3 VLAN as a participant VLAN of the target RB, and calculating and issuing a broadcast decapsulation flag for the layer-3 VLAN, then an ingress RB encapsulating a layer-2 Ethernet frame which is sent by the layer-3 network manager to the target RB and includes a layer-3 IP message into a TRILL data message for sending to the target RB, and the target RB decapsulating the TRILL to obtain the original layer-2 Ethernet frame for processing. By the present document, the problem of incapability in managing an RB running TRILL by the layer-3 network manager in the related technology is solved, and the TRILL network is conveniently planned and configured.

A packet-switched, fault-tolerant, vehicle communication internetwork (100, 400, 500) comprising port-based VLANs. Two or more VLANs are embodied where a source node (110, 410, 510,610) comprises two or more network interface circuits (130,140, 415,425, 515,525, 630,640), and where looping is precluded via specific VLAN tagging and switch ports (131-134, 200, 300, 420, 430, 435, 445, 455, 465, 535, 540, 545, 560, 575, 585, associated with at least one specific VLAN. A destination node (120, 440, 450, 460, 570, 580, 590, 620) may feedback packets to the source node via a general VLAN tag along pathways associated with the two or more specific outgoing VLAN tags.

This application provides an example label forwarding entry generation method, applied to a first network device. The method includes obtaining a first packet sent by a second network device, where the first packet carries an address of a third network device and a prefix segment identifier of the third network device, the first network device and the second network device belong to a first area, and the third network device belongs to a second area. The method also includes determining a routing entry that matches the address of the third network device, where the routing entry includes an address of a next-hop network device of the first network device. The method further includes generating a label forwarding entry based on the prefix segment identifier and the address of the next-hop network device.