Detailed Action
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 1/7/2026 has been entered.
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Applicant’s argument are moot based on a new prior art rejection as detailed below. The examiner has reviewed the Applicant’s arguments in detail (Pages 7-10). The Applicant’s amended claims are contemplated by Li, “HPCC: High Precision Congestion Control”.
Li states (see e.g. Section 3.1)
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Li also states (see e.g. Section 3.2)
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Li in the teachings above clearly provides one of ordinary skill in the art to contemplate “the largest network resource consumption data in a path of one or more switches”
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-11, 16-17, and 19 are rejected under 35 USC 104 as being unpatentable over Song US 2020/0084155 in view of RFC 793, ‘Transmission Control Protocol Darpa Internet Program Protocol Specification”, September, 1991 and in further view of Li, Li, “HPCC: High Precision Congestion Control”, August 2019.
Regarding claim 1, Song discloses an apparatus comprising:
a packet processing device comprising an interface and circuitry to (Song;
See e.g. Fig. 4 [0072] illustrating a packet processing device comprising circuitry;
see e.g. Fig. 2 illustrating the methodology of the packet processing device
Conventional circuitry and interfaces are inherently present to facilitate the reception and transmittal of packets):
request network resource congestion data from one or more other packet processing devices , wherein the one or more other packet processing devices are to provide network resource congestion data in a field of a packet header, wherein the packet header is based on transmission control protocol (TCP), the filed comprises a field of a TCP header (Song;
see e.g. [0079] “... The sending device 101 sends a data packet to the receiving device 106 by using an intermediate device. The sending device 101 may establish a transmission control protocol (English: Transmission Control Protocol, TCP) connection to the receiving device ...”
The Examiner notes TCP is equivalent to a reliable transport protocol
See e.g. [0088] “... When the intermediate device 103 determines that a congestion degree on the device is heavily congested, if the congestion mark in the first data packet is 00 or 01, the congestion mark is updated to 10; or if the congestion mark in the first data packet is 10, the congestion mark is not updated .. congestion mark update mechanism ...” See e.g. [0087]; See e.g. Claim 11
The Examiner notes the indicator is equivalent to the congestion mark (i.e. resource congtestion)
The Examiner has interpreted the request via the indication scheme as defined in the limitation
Song teaches([0083]) the use of an option field of a packet header to carry additional information, such as IP addresses of intermediated devices along a path.
A TCP header likewise comprises to one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the TCP option field in a similar manner to carry other control or management information, such as network resource congestion data, since the choice of what specific information in to place in a known option field is merely a matter of design choice,
The limitation therefore represents intended use of a known field, which does not impart patentable distinction. See MPEP $2111.05 (intended use) and 2144.04 (design choices of parameters yield predictable results)
As evidence of the above rationale, RFC 793 discloses:
TCP header/fields (RFC 793, see e.g. Section 3.1, Figure 3
RFC 793 teaches the well known TCP header comprises a plurality of fields including a variable length “Options Field” designed for extensibility (see e.g. Section 3.1, Fig. 3 depicting the TCP header format including the Option Field)
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Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Li in view of RFC 793 does not expressly disclose:
wherein the network resource congestion data comprises a largest network resource congestion data level in a path of one or more switches that provide communications between a sender device and an endpoint receiver device.
However in analogous art RFC 793 discloses:
wherein the network resource congestion data comprises a largest network resource congestion data level in a path of one or more switches that provide communications between a sender device and an endpoint receiver device. (Li;
Li states (see e.g. Section 3.1)
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Li also states (see e.g. Section 3.2)
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Li teaches that the sender reacts to the most congested link (see Fig. 5 and Equation 3), i.e. the maximum congestion among links in the path which corresponds to the claimed “largest network resource consumption data in a path of one or more switches”
The Examiner notes Li’s teaching is within the context of per-hop congestion values from multiple switches along a path. Selecting the largest among these values represents routing optimization of a result-effective variable (see MEPPE 2144.04)
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 2, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li disclose the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the field comprises a TCP Option Field (The combined solution per RFC 793, Section 3.1, Figure 3)
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 4, Song in view of RFC 793 discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is to transmit a received network resource congestion data in a second packet on the one or more packet processing devices to provide a reference network resource congestion data level from which the one or more other packet processing devices are to report whether to adjust network resource congestion data (Song;
See e.g. [0009] - [0011]
see e.g. [0087] – [0088]
see e,g, Claim 11).
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 5, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the network resource congestion data includes one or more of: congestion metric (U) value, a level of transit delay of a switch in a path from a sender to a receiver, level of queue depth of a switch in the path, level of buffer occupancy of a switch in the path, device identifier associated with network resource congestion data, data copy latency between a receiver packet processing device and host, or device identifier (Song;
See e.g. .[0088]
The Examiner notes the congestion mark is equivalent to a congestion metric)
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 6, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li discloses The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the packet processing device comprises one or more of: a network interface controller (NIC), a remote direct memory access (RDMA)-enabled NIC, SmartNIC, router, switch, forwarding element, infrastructure processing unit (IPU), or data processing unit (DPU (Song; A forwarding element is inherently present per the methodology of Fig. 2 and a network interface controller (NIC) is also inherently present to facilitate routing the packets through the network).
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 7, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li discloses the apparatus of claim 1, comprising a switch, wherein the switch comprises circuitry to generate second network network resource congestion, measured at the switch data in a TCP header field of a second packet and wherein the switch is to forward the second network resource congestion data to the packet processing device based on a value of the second network resource congestion data relative to a previous value of network resource congestion data (The combined solution per Song and RFC 793
See e.g. [0009], [0011, [0087]-[0088]
See e.g. [0106] “... path switching” See e.g. [0136]
See e.g., RFC 793, Section 3,1 Figure 3)
.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 8, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li discloses the apparatus of claim 1, comprising a receiver packet processing device comprising circuitry that is to: during a packet coalescing state, permit packet transmission based on a change in network resource congestion data (Song;
See e.g. [0009] - [0011]
see e.g. [0087] – [0088]
see e.g., Claim 11)
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 9, Song in view of RFC 793 in view of Li discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the packet processing device comprises circuitry to selectively modify a transmit rate and/or path of packets of a flow based on received network resource congestion data (Song;
See e.g. [0009] - [0011]
see e.g. [0087] – [0088]
see e.g., Claim 11).
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 10, Song in view of RFC 893 and in further view of Li disclose the apparatus of claim 1, comprising a server communicatively coupled to the packet processing device, wherein the server is to cause the packet processing device to request network resource congestion data from one or more other packet processing devices (Song;
See e.g. [0079] “.. The sending device 101 may be a host or server, the receiving device 106 may be a host or a server, and the intermediate device may be a switch, a router, a virtual switch or the like ...”
see e.g. [0079] “... The sending device 101 sends a data packet to the receiving device 106 by using an intermediate device. The sending device 101 may establish a transmission control protocol (English: Transmission Control Protocol, TCP) connection to the receiving device ...”
The Examiner notes TCP is equivalent to a reliable transport protocol
See e.g. [0088] “... When the intermediate device 103 determines that a congestion degree on the device is heavily congested, if the congestion mark in the first daa packet is 00 or 01, the congestion mark is updated to 10; or if the congestion mark in the first data packet is 10, the congestion mark is not updated .. congestion mark update mechanism ...” See e.g. [0087]; See e.g. Claim 11
The Examiner notes the indicator is equivalent to the congestion mark (i.e. resource consumption)
The Examiner has interpreted the request via the indication scheme as defined in the limitation))
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate RFC 793 TCP header options. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and controlling networks.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Li’s HPCC scheme. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implanting a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing and delivering network traffic.
Regarding claim 11, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li disclose The apparatus of claim 10, comprising a datacenter, wherein the datacenter includes the packet processing device, one or more switches in a path to a receiver packet processing device, and the receiver packet processing device (Song;
See e.g. [0079] “.. data center ... The sending device 101 may be a host or server, the receiving device 106 may be a host or a server, and the intermediate device may be a switch, a router, a virtual switch or the like ...”
See e.g. [0078]).
Regarding claim 16, claim 16 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 1 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 17, claim 17 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 2 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 19, claim 19 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 4 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 20, claim 20 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 5 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 12-15 and 21-22 are rejected under 35 USC 103 as being unpatentable over Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of LI, “HPCC” High Precision Congestion Control”, August 19th, 2019
Regarding claim 22, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li disclose the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the network resource congestion data comprises a congestion metric (U) value that is based on a queue length of received packets that are to be sent to a next hop device and a packet transmission rate from a port.
(The combined solution per Li;
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Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate LI’s queue length metric. The motivation being the combined solution provides for incorporating a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing a controlling networks..
Regarding claim 12, claim 12 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 22 and is considered an obvious variation. Therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
The Examiner notes the combination of Song, RFC 793 and Li contemplates switch identifiers (see e.g. Song [0141], [0136]
Regarding claim 13, Song in view of RFC 793 and LI discloses The at least one computer-readable medium of claim 12, comprising instructions stored thereon, that if executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to: cause one or more packet processing devices to utilize a protocol to generate and transmit network resource congestion data, in packet header, to the sender packet processing device (see e.g. Song [0009], [0079]).
Regarding claim 14, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of LI discloses the at least one computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the network resource congestion data includes one or more of: congestion metric (U) value, a level of transit delay of a switch in a path from the sender packet processing device to a receiver, level of queue depth of a switch in the path, level of buffer occupancy of a switch in the path, device identifier associated with network resource congestion data, data copy latency between a receiver packet processing device and host, or device identifier (Song;
See e.g. .[0088]
The Examiner notes the congestion mark is equivalent to a congestion metric)
Regarding claim 15, Song in view of RFC 793 and in further view of Li discloses the at least one computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the sender packet processing device comprises one or more of: a network interface controller (NIC), a remote direct memory access (RDMA)-enabled NIC, SmartNIC, router, switch, forwarding element, infrastructure processing unit (IPU), or data processing unit (DPU) (Song; A forwarding element is inherently present per the methodology of Fig. 2 and a network interface controller (NIC) is also inherently present to facilitate routing the packets through the network
See e.g. [0079] “.. data center ... The sending device 101 may be a host or server, the receiving device 106 may be a host or a server, and the intermediate device may be a switch, a router, a virtual switch or the like ...”)
Regarding claim 21, Song in view of RFC 783 and in further view of Li discloses The method of claim 16, wherein the transmitting the network resource congestion data in the field of the header of the packet comprises transmitting the packet with coalesced data from multiple packets.(The combined solution per Li ; Li teaches HPCC framework where network resource consumption data is aggregated (i.e. coalesced)
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Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate LI’s technique. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of network management.
Applicant's amendment (Claims submitted on 12/11/2024 which are the same as claims submitted on 6/27/2025) necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to TODD L. BARKER whose telephone number is (571) 270 0257. The Examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Friday, 7:30am to 5:00pm.
If attempts to reach the Examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner's supervisor Vivek Srivastava can be reached on (571) 272 7304.
/TODD L BARKER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2449