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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 9/13/2023 and 2/05/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cidon et al. (US 20210067464) in view of Chandrasekaran et al. (US 20230300560).
Regarding claims 1 and 12, Cidon teaches: A non-transitory machine readable medium / A method for using a heat map to modify an SD-WAN (software-defined wide-area network) deployed for a set of geographic locations (SD-WAN edge nodes having measurement agents in nearby candidate PCD groups that take network connection measurements to generate a routing graph par. 0417 – 0423 as well as DNS servers using IP addresses to Geo-IP map to identify location of measurement agents par. 0296), the method comprising: from a set of managed forwarding elements (MFEs) that forward a plurality of data message flows through the SD-WAN to a set of destination clusters, collecting a plurality of metrics associated with the plurality of data message flows (measurement agents of managed forwarding nodes computing and updating measurement metric values and sending measurement matrices to a controller cluster to aggregate connection data to obtain an aggregate mesh view of network connections par. 0113 – 0120); based on the collected plurality of metrics, generating a heat map that accounts for (i) the plurality of data message flows, (ii) locations of the set of MFEs, and (iii) locations of the one or more destination clusters (construction of a global routing graph which is an aggregated and optimized measurement graph which includes source and destination IP addresses, message-flow endpoints, as well as the DNS server including myNode identifiers which can include IP address or description of locations for forwarding nodes par. 0122 – 0138); and using the generated heat map to identify at least one modification to make to the SD-WAN to improve forwarding of the plurality of data message flows (MFNs can be added/removed from the list as new MFNs are added or new measurements are received and a process of path searching is utilized to examine how diverting data message flows could reduce load on overutilized MFNs, thereby controlling the amount of data message flows par. 0278 – 0280).
Cidon does not teach as clearly as Chandrasekaran teaches: using a heat map to modify an SD-WAN (creating and maintaining a heat map for enforcing a dynamically modifiable geofence for SD-WAN edge routers par. 0009 – 0010).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date to combine the teachings of Cidon with the teachings of Chandrasekaran since the methodologies and visualization aspects of Cidon could be enhanced by the heat maps of Chandrasekaran by utilizing said heat maps to determine signal strength based on location measurements as well as evaluating measurements to maintain tolerance values based on distance measurements. Further, the heat map allows for easier visualization of signals at certain coordinates while storing location/strength measurements for the connections.
Regarding claims 2 and 13, Cidon teaches: wherein the one or more destination clusters comprise a plurality of SaaS (software as a service) applications (controller cluster identifying ingress and egress routers which can include SaaS providers and the routes between them par. 0010).
Regarding claims 3 and 14, Cidon teaches: wherein using the generated heat map to identify at least one modification to make to the SD-WAN to improve forwarding of the plurality of data message flows comprises: identifying from the heat map a particular destination cluster at a particular location that does not include a geographically proximate MFE for forwarding data message flows to and from the particular destination cluster (using measurements to identify the best locations for deployments of application machines in public clouds par. 0024 while the controller cluster may scale up or down the number of necessary public cloud components that are used to establish the network par. 0089 - 0099); and deploying a new MFE to the particular location to improve forwarding to and from the particular destination cluster (deploying and configuring MFNs for particular tenants to improve redundancy and availability par. 0088 – 0089).
Regarding claims 4 and 15, Cidon teaches: wherein using the generated heat map to identify at least one modification to make to the SD-WAN to improve forwarding of the plurality of data message flows comprises: using the heat map to identify one or more locations of one or more destination clusters in the set of destination clusters experiencing congestion (statistics from MFNs being used identifying one or more overutilized MFNs of the virtual network par. 0365 – 0368); and for each of the identified one or more destination clusters, deploying a new MFE to the location of the destination cluster to improve forwarding to and from the destination cluster (diverting message flow path to a newly deployed MFN that is nearby par. 00367).
Regarding claims 5 and 16, Cidon teaches: wherein using the generated heat map to identify at least one modification to make to the SD-WAN to improve forwarding of the plurality of data message flows comprises: using the generated heat map to identify a set of SD-WAN applications (virtual network interconnects various web applications par. 0073); from the identified set of SD-WAN applications, identifying a particular SD-WAN application associated with a particular metric from the collected plurality of metrics to be improved (corporate WAN improving business critical application using performance metrics par. 0225); and modifying the SD-WAN to improve the particular metric for the particular SD-WAN application (controller cluster managing MFNs for tenants based on received tenant data par. 0236 – 0244).
Regarding claims 6 and 17, Cidon teaches: wherein the particular SD-WAN application comprises one of a VOIP application, a database application, and an application for running virtual machines (VMs) (corporate WANs using applications such as VOIP applications par. 0225).
Regarding claim 7, Cidon teaches: wherein the particular metric comprises one of throughput, latency, packet loss, and jitter (measurement agent computing and updating measurement metric values that include throughput, delay, loss, and link reliability par. 0117).
Regarding claims 8 and 18, Cidon teaches: wherein modifying the SD-WAN to improve the particular metric for the particular SD-WAN application comprises modifying one of (i) a number of edge forwarding elements that connect datacenters to each other through the SD-WAN, (ii) a number of hubs that connect edge forwarding elements to each other through the SD-WAN (selecting optimal edge MFNs for optimal paths between MFNs and/or SaaS providers/web destinations par. 0143), and (iii) link capacities of a set of links used to connect to the particular SD-WAN application (virtual network modifying link capacity by using various algorithms par. 0151 – 0152).
Regarding claim 9, Cidon teaches: presenting a visualization of the heat map through a user interface (UI), wherein using the generated heat map to identify at least one modification to make to the SD-WAN to improve forwarding of the plurality of data message flows comprises implementing a user-specified modification received through the UI (process 2100 provides a report for display through a UI management console or other interfaces to provide recommendations to add PCD groups to list of public clouds par. 0328 – 0329).
Regarding claim 10, Cidon teaches: wherein the visualization comprises (i) representations of the plurality of data message flows, (ii) representations of the set of MFEs at their respective locations, and (iii) representations of the one or more destination clusters at their respective locations (the displayed report includes path information of the connected PCD/MFNs, path search/measurement information, and analysis of collected statistics and measurements of PCDs and MFNs and their locations par. 0327 – 0337).
Regarding claim 19, Cidon teaches: the program further comprising a set of instructions for presenting, through a user interface (UI), a visualization of the heat map comprising (i) representations of the plurality of data message flows, (ii) representations of the set of MFEs at their respective locations, and (iii) representations of the one or more destination clusters at their respective locations (the displayed report includes path information of the connected PCD/MFNs, path search/measurement information, and analysis of collected statistics and measurements of PCDs and MFNs and their locations par. 0327 – 0337), wherein the set of instructions for using the generated heat map to identify at least one modification to make to the SD-WAN to improve forwarding of the plurality of data message flows comprises a set of instructions for implementing a user-specified modification received through the UI (process 2100 provides a report for display through a UI management console or other interfaces to provide recommendations to add PCD groups to list of public clouds par. 0328 – 0329).
Regarding claims 11 and 20, Cidon teaches: wherein the set of MFEs comprises (i) a set of edge routers for connecting datacenters to the SD-WAN (MFN including edge gateways for connections between datacenters par. 0094 – 0095), (ii) a set of cloud gateway routers for connecting edge routers in the set of edge routers to third-party datacenters through the SD-WAN (MFN including one or more VPN gateways for connections through external locations par. 0080), and (iii) a set of hub routers for connecting each edge router in the set of edge routers to each other edge router in the set of edge routers (hub sites or datacenters connected within the routing par. 0228).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Markuze et al. (US 20190158605) which outlines mapping managed forwarding nodes using IP addresses of public cloud gateways, and Cidon et al. (US 20190104035) which outlines mapping MFNs and Tenants into different classes of networks based on data flows.
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/J.S.M./Examiner, Art Unit 2198
/PIERRE VITAL/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2198
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