DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Status of Claims
2. This Office Action is in response to the application filed on 10/27/2022. Claims 1 and through 20 are presently pending and are presented for examination.
3. 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 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.
Claim Objections
4. Claims 1, 9, and 15 are objected to because of the following informalities: Claims 1, 9, and 15 recite the abbreviation “L2”. The unabbreviated “L2” is required. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
5. 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 9 and 13-15 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.
Claims 9 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph because claims 9 and 13-15 recite the limitation “the memory”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claims 10-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph because of their dependency from claim 9.
Claims 16-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph because of their dependency from claim 15.
Claims 3, 6, 11, 13, 17 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph because the recite “and/or”. It is not clear whether to chose the “or” option or “and” option. For example, if the “or” option is selected for the L2 protocol in claim 3, then there is no need for translating a L3 packet to the L2 packet.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
6. 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, 3,5-9, 11, 13-15, 17-18, and 20-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wijnands et al. (US 2023/0246967 A1) in view of Finkelstein (US 2012/0250504 A1).
For claim 1 Wijnands teaches a router-bridge system (see Fig. 1A and pargraph 30 “packet switching device 100”) comprising:
a plurality of frame engines (see Fig. 1A and pargraph 30 “line cards 101 and 105”), each frame engine comprising:
an ingress gateway configured to receive a plurality of ingress packets and convert protocols of the plurality of ingress packets to generate a plurality of L2 packets (see Fig. 1A and pargraph 30 “line cards 101 (ingress gateways) receive plurality of ingress packets”); and
an egress gateway configured to output a plurality of egress packets (see Fig. 1A and pargraph 30 “line cards 101 (ingress gateways) forward egress packets”);
at least one offload engine in communicate with at least two of the plurality of frame engines, and configured to modify the plurality of ingress packet or the plurality of egress packet (see Fig. 1A and paragraph 30 “an packet processing offload platform (engine) internal to packet switching device 100), which include processors used in processing packets (e.g., forward/send, drop, manipulate, change, modify, receive, create, duplicate, apply a service)”); and
a bus configured to facilitate communication among the plurality of frame engines (see Fig. 1A and paragraph 30 “bus (switching fabric) 130 provides communication among its entities 101, 102, 104, and 105”);
wherein the at least one offload engine is shared by the at least two of the plurality of frame engines (see Fig. 1A and paragraph 30 “an packet processing offload platform (engine) shared among the packet switching device 100 entities”).
Wijnands does not explicitly teach an ingress gateway configured to convert protocols of the plurality of ingress packets to generate a plurality of L2 packets.
However, Finkelstein teaches a router (gateway) may be configured to convert or map L3 address data into L2 address data and vice versa (see Finkelstein: paragraph 23).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to apply the teachings of Finkelstein in packet processing method of Wijnands in order convert IP addresses to MAC addresses (L2 addresses) for customer devices having MAC address (see Finkelstein: paragraph 4 “the CMTS must map the L3 address to a layer two ("L2") address for the
customer device”).
For claim 3 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system wherein the network protocols comprise layer 2 (L2), layer 3 (L3) and/or layer 4 (L4) protocols (see Finkelstein: Fig. 6B “IP forwarding table of router-L3 protocol” and Fig. 7 “packet 701 with IP DA”).
For claim 5 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system, further comprising a memory configured to store the plurality of processed packets, and download the plurality of processed packets to the each frame engine (see Finkelstein: Fig.1A “memory”, Fig.1B “memory 122 includes instructions and associative memories 125”).
For claim 6 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system of claim 5, wherein the memory is a static random access memory (SRAM) and/or a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) (see Finkelstein: pargraph 32 “RAM…ROM…”).
For claim 7 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system of claim 5, wherein the memory is further configured to store in-band packet messages (see Finkelstein: Fig.1A “memory 101).
For claim 8 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system, wherein the at least one offload engine comprises:
an ingress offload engine in communication with the at least two frame engines, and configured to modify the plurality of L2 packets according to network protocols to generate a plurality of processed packets (as discussed in claim 1); and
an egress offload engine in communication with the at least two frame engines, and configured to modify the plurality of processed packets according to the network protocols to generate a plurality of modified packets (as discussed in claim 1).
For claim 9 Wijnands teaches a method of processing network packets with a router-bridge system, the router-bridge system comprising a plurality of frame engines, at least one offload engine shared by at least two of the plurality of frame engines, and a bus, the each frame engine comprising an ingress gateway and an egress gateway (as discussed in claim 1), the method comprising:
receiving a plurality of ingress packets by the ingress gateway (as discussed in claim 1);
converting the plurality of ingress packets by the ingress gateway to generate a plurality of L2 packets (as discussed in claim 1);
modifying the plurality of L2 packets according to network protocols to generate a plurality of processed packets (as discussed in claim 1);
storing the plurality of processed packets to the memory via the bus (as discussed in claim 1);
accessing the plurality of processed packets from the memory via the bus (as discussed in claim 1);
modifying the plurality of processed packets according to the network protocols to generate a plurality of modified packets (as discussed in claim 1);
converting the plurality of modified packets to a plurality of egress packets by the egress gateway (as discussed in claim 1); and
outputting the plurality of egress packets by the egress gateway (as discussed in claim 1).
For claim 11 Wijnands teaches the method, wherein the network protocols comprise layer 2 (L2), layer 3 (L3) and/or layer 4 (L4) protocols (as discussed in claim 3).
For claim 13 Wijnands teaches the method of claim 12, wherein the memory is a static random access memory (SRAM) and/or a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) (as discussed in claim 6).
For claim 14 Wijnands teaches the method, wherein the memory stores in-band packet messages (as discussed in claim 5).
For claim 15 Wijnands teaches a router-bridge system (as discussed in claim 1) comprising:
a plurality of frame engines, each frame engine configured to receive a plurality of L2 packets (as discussed in claim 1);
an offload engine in communication with the each frame engine, and configured to modify the plurality of L2 packets according to network protocols to generate a plurality of modified packets (as discussed in claim 1); and a
bus configured to facilitate communication among the plurality of frame engines and the memory (as discussed in claim 1);
wherein the offload engine is shared by at least two of the plurality of frame engines (as discussed in claim 1).
For claim 17 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system, wherein the network protocols comprise layer 2 (L2), layer 3 (L3) and/or layer 4 (L4) protocols (as discussed in claim 3).
For claim 18 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system, wherein each frame engine comprises an ingress gateway and an egress gateway (as discussed in claim 1).
For claim 20 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system, further comprising a memory configured to store the plurality of modified packets, and download the plurality of modified packets to the each frame engine (as discussed in claim 5).
For claim 21 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system of claim 20, wherein the memory is a static random access memory (SRAM) and/or a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) (as discussed in claim 6).
For claim 22 Wijnands teaches the router-bridge system of claim 20, wherein the memory is further configured to store in-band packet messages (as discussed in claim 5).
7. Claims 4, 12, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wijnands et al. (US 2023/0246967 A1) in view of Finkelstein (US 2012/0250504 A1) further in view of Gebert et al. (US 2022/0022088 A1).
For claim 2 Wijnands in view of Finkelstein does not explicitly teach the router-bridge system, wherein an ingress gateway and an egress gateway of one of the plurality of frame engines are 5G Gateway, Gigabit passive optical network (GPON) Gateway or IEEE 802.11 Gateway.
Although, the above limitation is a design choice, Gebert teaches
in a time-sensitive communication system (or time sensitive networking). As an example, a 3GPP-standardized communication system, such as a 5G system, can be integrated in an IEEE-standardized communication system, such as an Ethernet network (see Gebert: paragraph 2). In addition, Gebert teaches 5G TSN Bridge (Gateway or router or switch)/End (ingress or egress or edge) Station (see Fig. 3 and paragraphs 53-55). In addition, Gebert teaches integrating IEEE TSN with 5G TSN (see Gebert: paragraphs 64-69).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to apply the teachings of Gebert in the combined packet processing method of Finkelstein and Wijnands in order to integrate 5G and IEEE devices for standards TSN internetworking (see Gebert: paragraphs 2-3).
For claim 10 Wijnands in view of Finkelstein further in view of Gebert teaches the method, wherein an ingress gateway and an egress gateway of one of the plurality of frame engines are 5G Gateway, Gigabit passive optical network (GPON) Gateway or IEEE 802.11 Gateway (as discussed in claim 2).
For claim 19 Wijnands in view of Finkelstein further in view of Gebert teaches the router-bridge system, wherein an ingress gateway and an egress gateway of one of the plurality of frame engines are 5G Gateway, Gigabit passive optical network (GPON) Gateway or IEEE 802.11 Gateway (as discussed in claim 2).
8. Claims 4, 12, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wijnands et al. (US 2023/0246967 A1) in view of Finkelstein (US 2012/0250504 A1) further in view of Mistry et al. (US 2025/0103783 A1).
For claim 4 Wijnands in view of Finkelstein does not explicitly teach the router-bridge system, wherein the bus is an Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) bus.
However, Mistry teaches in an exemplary SoS, the processing subsystem can be communicatively coupled to the programmable logic subsystem by an Advanced extensible Interface ("AXI") bus (see Mistry: paragraph 33).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to apply the teachings of Mistry in the combined packet processing method of Finkelstein and Wijnands in order select a programmable (configurable) bus AXI to allow design customize interface (bus) width (see Mistry: paragraph 33).
For claim 12 Wijnands in view of Finkelstein further in view of Mistry teaches the method, wherein the bus is an Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) bus (as discussed in claim 4).
For claim 16 Wijnands in view of Finkelstein further in view of Mistry teaches the router-bridge system, wherein the bus is an Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) bus (as discussed in claim 4).
Conclusion
9. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to David M OVEISSI whose telephone number is (571)270-3127. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8Am-5PM.
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/MANSOUR OVEISSI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415