An example communications device may include physical communication interfaces and processing circuitry. In response to detecting that two of the physical communications interfaces are both connected to a same peer device as one another, the communications device may automatically configure the two interfaces for aggregation into the same link aggregation group. The communications device may then automatically begin negotiations with the peer device for establishment of the first link aggregation group.

In one embodiment, a switch includes a processor and logic integrated with and/or executable by the processor to receive details about which link aggregation (LAG) information about a first peer switch will be exchanged with the switch, send to the first peer switch, prior to receiving the LAG information about the first peer switch, details about which LAG information about the switch will be exchanged with the first peer switch, receive the LAG information about the first peer switch, store the LAG information about the first peer switch, and use the LAG information about the first peer switch and the LAG information about the switch to determine load balancing across one or more connections between the switch and the first peer switch.

Systems and methods are described to provide fault tolerant folded Clos networks. A folded Clos network is disclosed including a set of tier 1 routers interconnected with a set of tier 2 routers. Tier 1 routers are configured to view a set of tier 2 routers as a single aggregate router. Accordingly, tier 1 routers are unaware of faults between tier 2 routers and additional tier 1 routers. A throwback router is connected to each tier 2 router to facilitate handling of data under such fault conditions. When a tier 2 router receives undeliverable data, the data is passed to a throwback router, which retransmits the data to an additional tier 2 router. Data that is retransmitted multiple times can be disregarded by the throwback router.

A method for creating a port group, includes generating, by a first software defined network (SDN) controller, the specified identifier according to a device identifier of a first forwarding device in a preset path, a device identifier of a last forwarding device in the preset path, and a device identifier of a specified forwarding device in the preset path; and sending, by the first SDN controller, the specified identifier to a second SDN controller, so that the second SDN controller creates, on the specified forwarding device, a specified port group corresponding to the specified identifier. Therefore, the first SDN controller needs to interact with the second SDN controller only once, to create a port group on the specified forwarding device that is directly controlled by the second SDN controller, and thus the port group creation process is simple.

A method is applied to a network comprising a first area and a second area. A first node in the first area obtains aggregated routing information, where the aggregated routing information is obtained by aggregating a plurality of pieces of original routing information, the plurality of pieces of original routing information correspond to N nodes in a network segment, the N nodes in the network segment have a same flexible algorithm flex-algo, and the aggregated routing information carries an algorithm identifier used to indicate the flex-algo and a network segment identifier used to indicate the network segment. The first node sends the aggregated routing information to the second area, where the aggregated routing information is used to indicate a node in the second area to send a packet to the N nodes in the network segment based on the aggregated routing information.

A method and network device for network traffic flooding. Specifically, the method and network device disclosed herein implement the mitigation of the lack of data-link layer (or L2) addressing resolutions, usually learned by or programmed manually into the network device, through the flooding of affected network traffic across identified network broadcast domains. Flooding of the network traffic in the aforementioned manner may ensure that at least the destination(s) of the network traffic receives the network traffic at least in scenarios where which it is unknown out of which particular physical network interface(s) should the network traffic be transmitted to reach the destination(s).

A system and method to transmit frames from a first node to a second node over a plurality of radio links comprising a classifier to classify said frames according to one of a plurality of flow and a sequence number within said one of said plurality of flow and adding said flow and sequence number in a header of said classified frame a splitter receiving said classified frames from said classifier and distributing said classified frames on one of said plurality of radio links for transmission to said second node, a joiner receiving said classified frames and reordering them using an indexed sequence queue corresponding to each of said plurality of flows, a timer for waiting for frames missing in the sequence in one of said indexed sequence queue, wherein when said timer expires, if said frame has not arrived it is deemed lost and a forwarder to extract frames from said sequence queue to forward.

Embodiments provide techniques for providing return-link routing in a hybrid communications network that includes a number of different networks having different characteristics. User terminal routing systems (UTRSs) provide interfaces between local user networks and the multiple communications networks of the hybrid network. Each UTRS can include a routing table having stored mappings that are populated according to forward-link communications (implicitly or explicitly), each associating a respective one of a plurality of routing table entries with one of the communications networks. When a UTRS receives return-link data from its respective local user network, the received data indicates a destination node. The UTRS can determine which of the stored mappings corresponds to the destination node and can route the received return-link data over a selected one of the communications networks in accordance with the identified one of the mappings.

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.

Provided are a method for link aggregation and related products. The method includes the following. Link tag information in a first data packet to be transmitted is acquired. A first wireless communication link, from multiple wireless communication links enabled, corresponding to the link tag information in the first data packet is determined. The first data packet is transmitted via a link interface of the first wireless communication link.