DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-6, 9-14, and 16-20 are pending. Claims 1, 9, and 16 are amended. Claims 1, 9, and 16 are independent. Claims 7, 8, and 15 are canceled. Amendments to the claims have been accepted.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1, 2, 4-6, 9, 10, 12-14, 16, 17, 19, and 20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection (Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi) does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 3, 11, and 18 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection (Moon in view of Doctor, Byagowi, and Leekwijck) does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1-2, 4-6, 9-10, 12-14, 16-17, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moon (MOON et al., US 20210367695 A1) in view of Doctor (Doctor et al., US 20090092057 A1) and Byagowi (Byagowi et al., US 20210288738 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, and substantially claims 9 and 16, Moon teaches a method, comprising: receiving a message with time information at an ingress point for an ingress interface of network element, the network element to monitor a network node of a time-synchronized network (TSN), the time information to comprise information to synchronize a first clock for a clock leader node and a second clock for clock follower node to a network time for the TSN maintained by the first clock (¶55, Fig. 1, time synchronization messages are sent from the grandmaster node (clock leader) to TSN Node 1 (network element), which are sent further to TSN Node 2 (network node, follower clock). ¶59, Fig. 3, the UPF/NW-TT (ingress point for an ingress interface) receives the sync message); generating an entrance timestamp for the message at the ingress point (¶59, Fig. 3, the ingress timestamp for the message is calculated); generating an exit timestamp for the message at an egress point when passing the message (¶59, the egress timestamp for the message at the time of departure (passing the message) is calculated by the USE); generating a time interval associated with the network element, the time interval to represent a time interval between the entrance timestamp and the exit timestamp for the message while transiting the network element; updating a correction value within a correction field for the message with the time interval; and sending the message with the updated correction value from the egress point of the egress interface of the network element to the network node (¶59, Fig. 3, the residence time is calculated as the difference between the ingress and egress time and is used to calculate the correction field). Moon further teaches a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, the computer-readable storage medium including instructions that when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform the method (¶147, ¶148).
Moon does not teach, but in an analogous art, Doctor teaches that the network element is an IDS (¶42, "An inspection system 400 monitors traffic across a protected interface, for example, between a computer and a network such as a local area network. In such a context, incoming packets 402 are generally received, such as from a network interface card. The incoming packets 402 are directed via a mandatory path 404 to a packet capture process 406 associated with a kernel 420 of an operating system as will be described below."), inspecting the message for indications of a security attack by the IDS when the message is in an ingress queue; and passing the message when the message is a benign message (¶64, "New packets 602 are analyzed by the inspection application 608 without leaving the circular queue 656 and are marked as pass or fail if the inspection application is an IPS application. When the packets 602 reach the exit port 664 of the circular queue 656, they are dropped if they failed the IPS application analysis or passed on through the network stack if they are passed the IPS application analysis.").
Doctor, thus, suggests that, for Moon, the ingress/egress points for the ingress/egress interfaces are part of a circular queue, such that the part of the queue at the ingress point is the ingress queue, and the part of the queue at the egress point is the egress queue. Doctor also suggests that the network element between network nodes can be an IPS (an upgraded IDS that can perform prevention in addition to detection), and inspecting the message in the IPS such that the time interval spent in the IPS is an inspection time interval. Doctor also suggests passing the message when the message is benign, such that if the message is benign and to-be-passed, it would have an egress timestamp generated as taught by Moon.
Thus, it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date of the invention to modify Moon using Doctor to use the network element as an IDS to inspect the message for indications of a security attack while in the queue because it allows one to inspect the traffic in real-time to detect and stop intrusion attempts (Doctor, ¶3, ¶4) and can do so efficiently by eliminating the need to copy packets back and forth for said inspection (Doctor, ¶35).
Moon in view of Doctor does not teach but, in an analogous art, Byagowi teaches using a node replicator to simulate one or more time synchronization operations performed by the network node (¶46, "Moreover, by utilizing CPU timestamping of PHC queries, a relatively accurate measurement of the synchronization of timing signals may be performed. In some examples, network namespaces 212-242 may be run with servos and grandmaster clock threads to simulate two PTP enabled hops from grandmaster NIC 204 to ordinary NIC 234." ¶53, "Additionally, network namespaces 112-152 may be executed utilizing one or more threads (e.g., one or more master physical clock threads) to simulate multiple PTP-enabled hops from clock 108 to clocks 118-148.").
Byagowi suggests for Moon in view of Doctor to simulate the time synchronization operations such that evaluating a PTP networks, such as a TSN network, would be performed by simulating that network to identify potential issues (Byagowi, ¶29, ¶30, "Advantageously, a physical processor may be utilized to determine an accuracy measurement of PTP timing synchronization between the physical clocks by executing the network namespaces without the use of special timing equipment under non real-time (e.g., simulation) conditions."). Thus, to evaluate a network hop, one could simulate the network to see if there is something wrong with it and if it is accurate.
It would be obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Moon in view of Doctor using Byagowi to simulate the time synchronization operations performed by the network node because it allows for relatively accurate measurements of the synchronization of the timing signals (Byagowi, ¶46).
Regarding Claim 2, and substantially claims 10 and 17, Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the message comprises a synchronization message (Moon, ¶55, the message is a sync message), a follow up message, a pdelay request message, a pdelay response message, a delay response follow up message, delay mechanism messages, network-delay measurement mechanism messages, peer delay messages, path delay messages, network delay messages, end-to-end (E2E) messages, or peer-to-peer (P2P) messages.
Regarding Claim 4, and substantially claims 12 and 19, Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi teaches the method of claim 1, comprising calculating one or more key performance indicators from within the network element (IDS, contextualized by Doctor) for the network node (Moon, ¶55, delay time for the link is periodically measured and used to calculate an average).
Regarding Claim 5, and substantially claims 13 and 20, Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi teaches the method of claim 1, comprising calculating multiple key performance indicators from within the network element (IDS, contextualized by Doctor) for the network node, the key performance indicators to comprise a frequency offset key performance indicator (KPI), a correction time KPI, a phase offset KPI, a link delay KPI, or a rate ratio KPI. (Moon, ¶55, delay time for the link is periodically measured and used to calculate an average. ¶75, ¶75, the rate ratio is configured).
Regarding Claim 6, and substantially claim 14, Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi teaches the method of claim 1, comprising determining whether the message is the benign message or a malicious message based on the inspection of the message or multiple messages including the message (Doctor, ¶64, "New packets 602 are analyzed by the inspection application 608 without leaving the circular queue 656 and are marked as pass or fail if the inspection application is an IPS application. When the packets 602 reach the exit port 664 of the circular queue 656, they are dropped if they failed the IPS application analysis or passed on through the network stack if they are passed the IPS application analysis.", ¶43, “In the embodiment shown in FIG. 4, the IPS application 408 may access rules 416 for policing the traffic across the protected interface. Such rules may identify potential malware…”, traffic (one or more messages) are determined to be indicative of malware or not).
Claim(s) 3, 11, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi as applied to claims 1, 9, and 16 above, and further in view of Leekwijck (VAN LEEKWIJCK et al., US 20180115493 A1).
Regarding Claim 3, and substantially claims 11 and 18, Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi teaches the method of claim 1. Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi does not teach but, in an analogous art, Leekwijck teaches generating the entrance timestamp for the message using a start value of a monotonic clock and the exit timestamp for the message using an end value of the monotonic clock (¶81, ¶96, a monotonic clock is used to generate timestamps. ¶87, the timestamps are generated for packets).
It would be obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date of the invention to modify Moon in view of Doctor and Byagowi using Leekwijck to use a monotonic clock because a monotonic clock is preferable for timestamping (Leekwijck, ¶96).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Varga (Varga et al., US 20250132999 A1) teaches replicating packets and performing diagnostics related to possible problems with the packets based on the replicated packets in a time-sensitive network.
Shadrin (SHADRIN et al., EP 3767914 A1) teaches a duplicator intercepting packets addressed to subordinate nodes of a system and using those duplicated packets as a comparison tool against the normal packets to see if there are any anomalies with the duplicated packets.
Kamen (Kamen et al., US 11502913 B1) teaches the simulation of a time synchronization environment and time synchronization in that environment to determine the health of different nodes within that environment.
Applicant's amendment 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 AMIR MAHDI HAJIABBASI whose telephone number is (703)756-5511. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-5 EST.
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/A.M.H./
Amir Mahdi HajiabbasiExaminer, Art Unit 2407
/Catherine Thiaw/Supervisory Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2407 10/30/2025