Embodiments of the present invention provide a cluster that includes a first node and a second node, and the first node and the second node are configured to cooperatively perform a forwarding service on a first packet, where the first node is configured to receive the first packet by using an inbound interface and determine the inbound interface; and the second node is configured to determine an outbound interface according to a forwarding table corresponding to the forwarding service and forward the first packet by using the outbound interface of the second node. In addition, the embodiments of the present invention further provide other clusters and forwarding methods. The foregoing technical solutions help to reduce software and hardware resources occupied by a cluster.

In one embodiment, a solution is provided wherein redundant routers are treated as a single emulated switch. When a packet is received at a layer 2 edge switch from a host, the layer 2 edge switch may determine a switch identifier for the emulated switch using a destination anycast hardware address contained in the packet. The anycast hardware address may identify an emulated switch comprising a plurality of routers. Then a header may be added to the packet, the header including the switch identifier. Following that, the packet may be forwarded to another layer 2 switch along a shortest path from the layer 2 edge switch to the emulated switch.

Embodiments of the present invention relate to the communications field, and provide a multi-chassis cascading apparatus. The apparatus includes a line card chassis LCC, where a fabric interface chip FIC and a switch element SE 1/3 are deployed in each line card chassis LCC; the fabric interface chip FIC is connected to the switch element SE 1/3 that is located in the same line card chassis LCC as the fabric interface chip FIC is; and a switch element SE 2 is deployed in each line card chassis LCC; the switch element SE 1/3 is connected to the switch element SE 2 that is located in the same line card chassis LCC as the switch element SE 1/3 is; and the switch element SE 1/3 is connected to the switch element SE 2 that is located in another line card chassis LCC.

The deployment and scaling of a network of electronic devices can be improved by utilizing one or more network transpose boxes. Each transpose box can include a number of connectors and a meshing useful for implementing a specific network topology. Different tiers of a network can be connected to one or more of the network transpose boxes, and operated as a logical switch. A control server can be used to manage the control plane operations of the logical switch.

A novel and efficient method is described that creates a monolithic high capacity Packet Engine (PE) by connecting N lower capacity Packet Engines (PEs) via a novel Chip-to-Chip (C2C) interface. The C2C interface is used to perform functions, such as memory bit slicing and to communicate shared information, and enqueue/dequeue operations between individual PEs.

A system and method can support partition-aware routing in a multi-tenant cluster environment. An exemplary method can support one or more tenants within the multi-tenant cluster environment. The method can associate each of the one or more tenants with a partition of a plurality of partitions. The method can then associate each of the plurality of partitions with one or more nodes of a plurality of nodes, each of the plurality of nodes being associated with a leaf switch of a plurality of switches, the plurality of switches comprising a plurality of leaf switches and a plurality of root switches. Finally, the method can generate one or more linear forwarding tables, the one or more linear forwarding tables providing isolation between the plurality of partitions, wherein each of the plurality of nodes is associated with a partitioning order.

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are provided for enforcing policy for upstream (e.g., traffic from an endpoint to the physical network layer or hardware fabric of a data center) flood traffic (e.g., broadcast, unknown unicast, or multicast traffic) originating from a virtual endpoint via a network fabric. In one embodiment, upstream flood traffic can be transmitted using a special multicast group to which only elements of the data center fabric (e.g., physical switches, routers) are subscribed. That is, upstream flood traffic is assigned to the special multicast group, resulting in unintended endpoints not receiving the flood traffic. However, the hardware fabric receives the flood traffic and will then enforce applicable policies to route the packets to intended endpoints.

Technologies are generally described for systems, devices and methods effective to compare network element instructions and network control instructions. In some examples, first instructions may be identified and may be related to flow of network traffic. The first instructions may be stored in a data structure of a memory of a network element. The network element may generate a first network instruction signature based on the first instructions. A network controller device may identify second instructions. In some examples, the second instructions may be related to control of the network traffic, and may be stored in a memory of the network controller device. The network controller device may generate a second network instruction signature based on the second instructions. The network controller device may compare the first network instruction signature to the second network instruction signature to produce a comparison between the first instructions and the second instructions.

MPLS segment routing is disclosed. In one embodiment, a first core router generates a first data structure that maps first portcodes to respective identities of first neighbor routers or respective first links, wherein the first portcodes identify respective first ports of the first core router, and wherein the first ports are coupled to the first neighbor routers, respectively, via the first links, respectively. The first core router generates and transmits a first link-state packet, wherein the first link-state packet comprises an identity of the first core router and the first data structure.

A method for aliasing of named data objects (in named data networks) and entities for named data networks (e.g., named graphs for named data networks). In various examples, aliasing of named data objects may be implemented in one or more named data networks in the form of systems, methods and/or algorithms. In other examples, named graphs may be implemented in one or more named data networks in the form of systems, methods and/or algorithms.