DETAILED ACTION
This Communication is a First Action on the Merits (FAOM). Claims 1-20, as originally filed, are pending and have been considered as follows.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 3-7, 11-14, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
As per Claim 3, the claims recite in part …determining a VXLAN header of the data packet. The claim does not indicate the meaning of VXLAN and the Specification is also silent regarding its meaning.
As per Claim 4, the claims recite in part …broadcasting the data packet to all nodes associated with a VNET ID of the workload. The claim does not indicate the meaning of VNET ID and the Specification is also silent regarding its meaning.
Claims 5, 7, 11, 12, 14, 18 and 20 also recite the term VXLAN without indicating the meaning of the acronym and as such are rejected under a similar rationale.
Claims 4, 6, 11 and 13 also recite the term VNET ID without indicating the meaning of the acronym and as such are rejected under a similar rationale.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huang et al (2021/0194831 A1) in view of LE et al (2022/0060418 A1).
As per Claim 1, Huang teaches a method for processing data packets in a computing network processing workloads (Page 2, Paragraphs [0033] – [0035]) and the network devices configured to process data packets associated with the workloads outside of the computing nodes (Figure 1C – 102; Figure 6 – Reference 600)
(Note: Huang describes a distributed RL training system includes a programmable switch that leverages an in0switch accelerator responsible for communicating with a number of worker computing devices which Huang refers to as agents who Huang indicates participate in reinforcement learning)
Huang also teaches receiving, by the network device (Programmable Switch: Figure 1C – 102; Figure 6 – Reference 600), a data packet associated with a workload being processed in the computing network (Figure 5B; Page 4, Paragraph [0057]); determining, by the network device, that the packet is associated with the workload being processed in the computing network; based on information contained in a header of the packet (ToS: Page 4, Paragraphs [0054] and [0057]).
(Note: Figure 5B is an illustration of a data packet that utilizes a type of service [ToS] field to identify packets. Huang indicates that the ToS field may be a 1-byte field [i.e. a flag] and tagged with a reserve value. Its UDP payload may be gin with an 8-byte segment field indicating the indices of transferred data packets. Each segment corresponds to a special offset in the gradient vector and the gradient data from the packets with the same segment number may be aggregated)
Huang further teaches performing, by the network device, an operation on a payload of the packet (Paragraph [0071]); and sending, by the network device, the processed packet to a destination address determined based on the header of the packet or additional configuration information (Figure 6 – Reference 651; Paragraph [0059]).
(Note: The accelerator-based switch may start the computation immediately as soon as the incoming packets with the same segment number are received. Such an on-the-fly aggregation approach hides the overhead of summation operations and data transmission which further reduces the latency of gradient aggregation – See Figure 8. Huang indicates that the packets are dispatched to their corresponding egress transmission queues in the egress portion of the data plane where the packets are transmitted through Ethernet MAC and PHY transceivers)
Huang does not teach implementing a software defined network (SDN). However, Le teaches implementing a software defined network (SDN) (Page 2, Paragraph [0027]). The combination of Huang and Le teaches a virtualized computing network comprising a plurality of computing nodes and network devices the computing nodes hosting virtual machines or containers (Huang: Page 8, Paragraph [0085]; Le: Page 6, Paragraph [0078] and [0080]).
(Note: In paragraph [0085], Huang describes a virtual parameter server – [i.e. virtual machine] in an asynchronous switch aggregation. In paragraphs [0078], Le describes assigning bits to header fields which Le refers to as data containers. In paragraphs [0080], Le describes constructing a packet based at least in part on information from data containers)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method taught by Huang with the method taught by Leto enable real-time traffic management and quick adaptation while reducing operational expenses through automation and vendor-neutral hardware in support of cloud service, big data and Internet of Things by making networks more responsive, scalable and efficient.
As per Claim 2, Huang teaches wherein the workload comprises an artificial intelligence (AI) workload (Page 1, Paragraph [0027]).
As per Claim 10, the combination of Huang and Le teaches the method and network device as described in Claim 1. Huang also teaches processing artificial intelligence (Al) workloads as described in Claim 2. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method taught by Huang with the method taught by Leto enable real-time traffic management and quick adaptation while reducing operational expenses through automation and vendor-neutral hardware in support of cloud service, big data and Internet of Things by making networks more responsive, scalable and efficient.
As per Claim 17, the combination of Huang and Le teaches the method, network device and system as described in Claim 1. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method taught by Huang with the method taught by Leto enable real-time traffic management and quick adaptation while reducing operational expenses through automation and vendor-neutral hardware in support of cloud service, big data and Internet of Things by making networks more responsive, scalable and efficient.
Claim(s) 3-6, 11-13 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huang et al (2021/0194831 A1) in view of LE et al (2022/0060418 A1) as applied to Claims 1, 10 and 17 above, and further in view of Fu et al (2021/0226892 A1).
As per Claims 3, 11 and 18, the combination of Huang and Le teaches the method, network device and system of Claims 1, 10 and 17; but does not teach wherein determining the destination address comprises determining a VXLAN header of the data packet. However, Fu teaches wherein determining the destination address comprises determining a VXLAN header of the data packet (Page 11, Paragraphs [0146] – [0149]). (Note: Claim 11 is taught as described above in Claims 2-4)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method, network device and system taught by Huang and Le with the method taught by Fu to promote better traffic management and bandwidth allocation ensuring smoother performance especially for demanding applications such as the heavy traffic associated with large data processing.
As per Claims 4, the combination of Huang, Le and Fu teaches in response to determining that the destination address indicates a broadcast IP address, broadcasting the data packet to all nodes associated with a VNET ID of the workload (Fu: Page 6, Paragraph [0082]; Page 9, Paragraphs [0110] and [0110]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method taught by Huang and Le with the method taught by Fu to promote better traffic management and bandwidth allocation ensuring smoother performance especially for demanding applications such as the heavy traffic associated with large data processing.
As per Claims 5 and 12, the combination of Huang, Le and Fu teaches identifying an aggregation operation of the data packet based on an operation ID, operation type, and data ID in a VXLAN extension header of the data packet (Huang: Page 5, Paragraphs [0061], [0062] and [0066]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and network device taught by Huang and Le with the method taught by Fu to promote better traffic management and bandwidth allocation ensuring smoother performance especially for demanding applications such as the heavy traffic associated with large data processing.
As per Claims 6 and 13, the combination of Huang, Le and Fu teaches in response to determining that the data packet needs to be aggregated, broadcasting results of the aggregation operation to all nodes associated with the VNET ID of the workload as described in Claims 4 and 5 above.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and network device taught by Huang and Le with the method taught by Fu to promote better traffic management and bandwidth allocation ensuring smoother performance especially for demanding applications such as the heavy traffic associated with large data processing.
Claim(s) 7, 14 and 20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huang et al (2021/0194831 A1) in view of LE et al (2022/0060418 A1) as applied to Claim 1, 10 and 17 above, and further in view of Kaliyamoorthy et al (2022/0231941 A1).
As per Claims 7, 14 and 20, the combination of Huang and Le teaches the method, network device and system of Claims 1, 10 and 17; but does not teach wherein the workload is identified with a unique VXLAN ID. However, Kaliyamoorthy teaches wherein the workload is identified with a unique VXLAN ID (Figure 3 – Reference 304; Figure 4 – Reference 404; Page 5, Paragraph [0047]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method, network device and system taught by Huang and Le with the method taught by Kaliyamoorthy to facilitate intelligent traffic engineering and load balancing helping to optimize network paths, reduce congestion and ensure critical applications have the necessary bandwidth.
Claim(s) 8, 9, 15, 16 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huang et al (2021/0194831 A1) in view of LE et al (2022/0060418 A1) as applied to Claims 1, 10 and 17 above, and further in view of Shen et al (2023/0300002 A1).
As per Claims 8, 9, 15, 16 and 19, the combination of Huang and Le teaches the method, network device and system of Claims 1, 10 and 17; but does not teach wherein the network device is a switch configured with data processing units (DPUs); and wherein the switch is deployed as a Tier 0 switch (Page 2, Paragraph [0026]; Page 3, Paragraph [0031]; Page 6, Paragraph [0059]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method, network device and system taught by Huang and Le with the method and system taught by Shen to impose centralized control and fine-grained policies that allow for better network segmentation, faster threat detection and the ability to isolate compromised devices quickly.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Ray et al (2015/0229724 A1), Underwood et al (2023/0035657 A1), Matthews et al (11,328,222 B1), SHUKLA et al (2022/0311832 A1), SIVATHANU et al (2022/0318052 A1). Each of these describes communication routing in software-based networks.
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KHARYE POPE
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2693
/KHARYE POPE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693