A router of a network-on-chip receives delay information associated with a plurality of links of the network-on-chip. The router determines at least one link of a data path based on the delay information.

Exemplary methods include a first network device participating in an election process to determine a designated bit forwarding router (D-BFR). The methods include in response to determining the first network device is elected to be the D-BFR, performing D-BFR operations comprising determining an elected bitmask (BM) length of a BM based on maximum local BM lengths advertised by other BFRs in the network, wherein each bit of the BM will correspond to a bit forwarding egress router (BFER), and advertising the determined elected BM length to other BFRs. The methods may further include one or more of determining an elected tree type based on supported tree types advertised by other BFRs in the network, assigning one or more BM positions (BMPs) to one or more BFERs, and advertising the elected determined tree type and/or the assigned one or more BMPs.

In general, this disclosure describes a high-level forwarding path description language (FPDL) for describing internal forwarding paths within a network device. The FPDL enables developers to create a template that describes a section of an internal forwarding path within the forwarding plane of a network device. The FPDL provides syntactical elements for specifying the allocation of forwarding path structures as well as enabling the run-time construction of internal forwarding paths to interconnect the forwarding path structures in a manner specific to packet, packet flow, and/or interface properties, for example. In conjunction with late binding techniques, whereby the control plane of the network device provides arguments to template parameters that drive allocation by the packet forwarding engines of forwarding path structures specified by the FPDL, the techniques provide control plane processes a unified interface with which to manage the operation of the packet forwarding engines.

A network device executes a method to forward a packet that is encoded using an explicit list encoding of sparse multicast group membership information with Bit Index Explicit Replication. The method includes receiving a packet that includes a bitstring having a list of Bit Forwarding Router IDs (BFR-ids). The method further includes selecting a BFR-id identifying a destination Bit Forwarding Router (BFR) from the list for processing, looking up a forwarding bitmask for the destination BFR and a next-hop to reach the destination BFR in a bit index forwarding table, creating a copy of the packet, clearing the selected BFR-id from the packet, clearing BFR-ids from the packet and the copy of the packet based on the forwarding bitmask, and forwarding the copy of the packet to the next-hop neighbor.

A method and a system is disclosed herein for co-operative on-path and off-path caching policy for information centric networks (ICN). In an embodiment, a computer implemented method and system is provided for cooperative on-path and off-path caching policy for information centric networks in which the edge routers or on-path routers optimally store the requested ICN contents and are supported by a strategically placed central off-path cache router for additional level of caching. A heuristic mechanism has also been provided to offload and to optimally store the contents from the on-path routers to off-path central cache router. The present scheme optimally stores the requested ICN contents either in the on-path edge routers or in strategically located off-path central cache router. The present scheme also ensures optimal formulation resulting in reduced cache duplication, delay and network usage.

A network device within a data communication network includes a plurality of network interfaces, each programmed with a respective set of Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) routing entries for correlating network addresses with physical addresses. Each network interface is further programmed with an additional respective set of Longest Prefix Match (LPM) routing entries for correlating other network addresses with designated network interfaces to enable traffic matching one of the LPM routing entries to be forwarded to the appropriate designated network interface within the network device.

In one embodiment, a primary tunnel is established from a head-end node to a destination along a path including one or more protected network elements for which a fast reroute path is available to pass traffic around the one or more network elements in the event of their failure. A first path quality measures path quality prior to failure of the one or more protected network elements. A second path quality measures path quality subsequent to failure of the one or more protected network elements, while the fast reroute path is being used to pass traffic of the primary tunnel. A determination is made whether to reestablish the primary tunnel over a new path that does not include the one or more failed protected network elements, or to continue to utilize the path with the fast reroute path, in response to a difference between the first path quality and the second path quality.

Methods and devices for processing packets are provided. The processing device may include an input interface for receiving data units containing header information of respective packets; a first module configurable to perform packet filtering based on the received data units; a second module configurable to perform traffic analysis based on the received data units; a third module configurable to perform load balancing based on the received data units; and a fourth module configurable to perform route lookups based on the received data units.

A method implemented in an integrated edge node for performing routing functions and network appliance services at the edge of a network, the method comprising disassociating a first network feature from a port, creating a plurality of first internal virtual ports, associating the plurality of first internal virtual ports to a first network appliance service component and a core unit component, mapping the plurality first internal virtual ports to each other and to a plurality of ports, constructing an internal path comprising at least one port, a subset of the plurality of internal virtual ports, the network appliance service component, and the core unit component, and associating the first network feature to the internal path.

A system includes a first aggregated networking device that is included with the second aggregated networking device in a link aggregation domain. The first aggregated networking device provides, to a networking device via a link aggregation group (LAG), a first control message that defines itself as a root bridge and the first link aggregation domain as a designated bridge. The second aggregated networking device detects that the first aggregated networking device is unavailable. The second aggregated networking devices then provides, to the networking device via the LAG, a second control message that defines itself as the root bridge, and the first link aggregation domain as the designated bridge. Network traffic is transmitted in response to the networking device accepting the second aggregated networking device as a new root bridge based on the first link aggregation domain being defined as the designated bridge in both the first and second control messages.