DETAILED ACTION
This Final Office Action is in response to application number 18/510,886 filed on November 16th,2023. 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 Statements
The information disclosure statements (IDS), submitted on February 25,2026, July 29th, 2025 and March 28th, 2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-7 and 10-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Onno et al. (EP 3264678 A1) in view of Brar et al. (US20240031282 A1) further in view of McIntosh et al. (US 20090013210 A1).
Regarding claims 1,12 and 17 Onno et al. disclose a method, comprising: establishing, by a bridged gateway coupled to a local area network (LAN) in a premises, a layer 2 tunnel with a first computing device that is external to the LAN, the first computing device operable to provide a virtual gateway that provides default gateway functionality to computing devices connected to the LAN; generating, by the bridged gateway, a first message for processing by the virtual gateway; sending, by the bridged gateway via the layer 2 tunnel, the first message to the first computing device for delivery to the virtual gateway (Paragraph 0045-0046 and FIG. 1 discloses the network architecture, the Broadband Residential Gateway connected via the link layer tunnel to Virtual Gateway, “It is assumed that the gateway functionality is split in two parts, interconnected by mean of a tunnel 101, each part hosting a tunnel endpoint (TEP) 102, 103. This tunnel can be used to abstract from the underlying physical network topology while interconnecting the broadband residential gateway (BRG) {also called bridge or switch) 104 and the virtual gateway100 at the link layer.” Paragraph 0054 discloses the generation and transmission of the first message by the BRG “Once the BRG 104 is connected to the access network, after the physical attachment (e.g. xDSL), the BRG 104 can broadcast a DHCP request. This is caught by the DHCP server residing in the first upstream IP enabled device, which may be the Broadband Network Gateway (BNG, the old BRAS). The DHCP server (more exactly its associated AAA server) can authenticate the BRG 104 thanks to its MAC (Media Access Control) address and return the corresponding configuration. This corresponding configuration can include the BRG IP address and the GRE tunnel endpoint IP address that is the IP address of the virtual machine hosting the tunnel end point (TEP) virtual function of the virtual gateway 100.”);
Onno et al. fail to explicitly disclose the virtual gateway being one of a plurality of virtual gateways, each virtual gateway of the plurality of virtual gateways operable to establish a separate layer 2 tunnel and provide default gateway functionality to a designated LAN of a plurality of LANs;
However in an analogous art Brar et al. teaches the virtual gateway being one of a plurality of virtual gateways, each virtual gateway of the plurality of virtual gateways operable to establish a separate layer 2 tunnel and provide default gateway functionality to a designated LAN of a plurality of LANs; (Paragraph 0161 discloses “With reference now to FIG. 6, a schematic illustration of one embodiment of a computing network is shown. A VCN 602 resides in a CSPI 601. The VCN 602 includes a plurality gateways connecting the VCN 602 to other networks. These gateways include a DRG 604 which can connect the VCN 602 to, for example, an on-premise network such as on-premise data center 606. The gateway can further include a gateway 600, which can include, for example, a LPG for connecting the VCN 602 with another VCN, and/or an IGW and/or NAT gateway for connecting the VCN 602 to the internet. The gateways of the VCN 602 can further include a services gateway 610 which can connect the VCN 602 with a services network 612. The services network 612 can include one or several databases and/or stores including, for example, autonomous database 614 and/or object store 616. The services network can comprise a conceptual network comprising an aggregation of IP ranges, which can be, for example, public IP ranges. In some embodiments, these IP ranges can cover some or all of the public services offered by the CSPI 601 provider. These services can, for example, be accessed through an Internet Gateway or NAT Gateway. In some embodiments, the services network provides a way for the services in the services network to be accessed from the local region through a dedicated gateway for that purpose (a Service Gateway). In some embodiments, the backends of these services can be implemented in, for example, their own private networks. In some embodiments, the services network 612 can include further additional databases.” Paragraph 0048 further discloses “A compute instance deployed on a VCN can communicate with public accessible endpoints (“public endpoints”) over a public network such as the Internet, with other instances in the same VCN or other VCNs (e.g., the customer's other VCNs, or VCNs not belonging to the customer), with the customer's on-premise data centers or networks, and with service endpoints, and other types of endpoints.”)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. to incorporate the teachings of Brar et al., to implement the virtual gateway being one of a plurality of virtual gateways, each virtual gateway of the plurality of virtual gateways operable to establish a separate layer 2 tunnel and provide default gateway functionality to a designated LAN of a plurality of LANs, in order establish and maintain separation and isolation of the network associated with the BRG.
Onno et al. and Brar et al. fail to explicitly disclose determining, by the bridged gateway, that a reply to the first message from the virtual gateway has not been received within a predetermined period of time; and in response to determining that a reply has not been received within the predetermined period of time, sending a status message to a second computing device.
However in an analogous art McIntosh et al. teaches determining, by the bridged gateway, that a reply to the first message from the virtual gateway has not been received within a predetermined period of time (Paragraph 0100 discloses “Ping is a reliable, low-level, widely used program that generates an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo request. When a server or router receives an ICMP echo request, it responds with an ICMP echo response, assuming that it is set to respond to anonymous WAN (wide area network; the other side of the gateway) or Internet traffic…. A successful ping, i.e. transmitting an echo request and receiving a valid echo response is a reliable test of connectivity. By pinging resources resident on the public Internet, connectivity between client and local network and between local network and the Internet may be inferred.”); and in response to determining that a reply has not been received within the predetermined period of time, sending a status message to a second computing device (Paragraph 0087 discloses “If response to one ping is not returned in a timely manner, the NPR's ping algorithm will next attempt five pings in succession, four of which must be successfully echoed (80 percent or more). If two or more of these five pings are missed, NPR assumes a fault and, in certain embodiments, sends a status message to the Status Server of the Network Monitor & Control Server, the NMCS during its next scheduled status-report session.” Examiner Note; the IP address of the management interface of the Virtual Gateway shall serve to validate connectivity between the BRG and VG ).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. and Brar et al. to incorporate the teachings of McIntosh et al., to determine that a reply to the first message from the virtual gateway has not been received within a predetermined period of time and in response to send a status message to a second computing device, in order to inform the network management system of the fault at the virtual gateway so that necessary remedial actions can be taken to resolve the fault.
Regarding claims 2 and 16, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the bridged gateway comprises a wide- area network (WAN) interface and a LAN interface, and an internet protocol address associated with the WAN interface ( Paragraph 0046 and FIG. 1 discloses “The bridge 104 can be connected to a home (or business) network 105 (e.g. private network) such a LAN (Local Area Network) or WAN (Wide Area Network).”).
Regarding claim 3, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 2, wherein the layer 2 tunnel is established via the WAN interface (Paragraph 0051 discloses “As shown in Figure 2, at the entrance in the datacenter, a multiplexing function (MUX) 210 of the virtual gateway 100 can be provided to ensure connectivity between a physical broadband residential gateway 104 and the associated virtual gateway functions. The multiplexing function (MUX) 210 can be configured by the orchestrator with the customer's settings. This function can be implemented, for example, by a programmable switch, which may also provide connectivity to the WAN and cloud hosted services. In one embodiment, it is assumed this to be a large capacity switching fabric, possibly assisted by dedicated hardware. It can handle the termination of the tunnel towards the BRG 104 and can re-encapsulate the traffic towards the peer VGW services or tag the traffic with a customer ID before passing it to a mutualized service. As shown in the embodiment of Figure 1, the multiplexing function 210 can implement a tunnel end point (TEP) 103 and can re-encapsulate the traffic in a dedicated VxLAN (Virtual Extensible Local Area Network) for each customer.”).
Regarding claim 4, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 1.
Onno et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the status message comprises information indicating that the first computing device or the virtual gateway is not responding.
However in an analogous art McIntosh et al. teaches wherein the status message comprises information indicating that the first computing device or the virtual gateway is not responding (Paragraph 0087 discloses “If response to one ping is not returned in a timely manner, the NPR's ping algorithm will next attempt five pings in succession, four of which must be successfully echoed (80 percent or more). If two or more of these five pings are missed, NPR assumes a fault and, in certain embodiments, sends a status message to the Status Server of the Network Monitor & Control Server, the NMCS during its next scheduled status-report session.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. to incorporate the teachings of McIntosh et al., to send a status message indicating that the virtual gateway is not responding, in order to inform the network management system of the fault at the virtual gateway so that necessary remedial actions can be taken to resolve the fault.
Regarding claims 5 ,13 and 18, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 1.
Onno et al. fail to explicitly disclose sending, by the bridged gateway to the first computing device, a PING command; and determining, by the bridged gateway, a post PING event comprising one of receiving a response to the PING command and not receiving a response to the PING command within a predetermined period of time.
However in an analogous art McIntosh et al teaches sending, by the bridged gateway to the first computing device, a PING command; and determining, by the bridged gateway, a post PING event comprising one of receiving a response to the PING command and not receiving a response to the PING command within a predetermined period of time (Paragraph 0100 discloses sending of the ICMP request and receiving the ICMP response whereby ping default encompasses the predetermined time “Ping is a reliable, low-level, widely used program that generates an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo request. When a server or router receives an ICMP echo request, it responds with an ICMP echo response…” Additionally paragraph 0088 discloses “A person having ordinary skill in the art will recognize that the time intervals employed in the tests need not be exactly as specified, and the times, numbers of pings per cycle and other specific numbers are provided as a general guideline, not as a requirement and are not a limitation of the invention.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. to incorporate the teachings of McIntosh et al., to send a ping command from the bridged gateway to the virtual gateway and to receive a related response from virtual gateway, in order to inform the bridged gateway, the operational status of the virtual gateway.
Regarding claims 6,14 and 19, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 5.
Onno et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the post PING event further comprises receiving the response to the PING command, and wherein the status message comprises information indicating that the first computing device is reachable but not responding.
However in an analogous art McIntosh et al. teaches wherein the post PING event further comprises receiving the response to the PING command, and wherein the status message comprises information indicating that the first computing device is reachable but not responding (Paragraph 0100 discloses sending of the ICMP request and receiving the ICMP response is establishment of connectivity “Ping is a reliable, low-level, widely used program that generates an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo request. When a server or router receives an ICMP echo request, it responds with an ICMP echo response, assuming that it is set to respond to anonymous WAN (wide area network; the other side of the gateway) or Internet traffic…. A successful ping, i.e. transmitting an echo request and receiving a valid echo response is a reliable test of connectivity. By pinging resources resident on the public Internet, connectivity between client and local network and between local network and the Internet may be inferred.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. to incorporate the teachings of McIntosh et al., to receive the response to the PING command, wherein the status message comprises information indicating that the first computing device is reachable but not responding, in order to inform the bridged gateway the specific status of the virtual gateway with regards to connectivity and operability.
Regarding claims 7,15 and 20, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 5.
Onno et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the post PING event comprises not receiving the response to the PING command within the predetermined period of time, and wherein the status message comprises information indicating that the first computing device is not reachable.
However in an analogous art McIntosh et al. teaches wherein the post PING event comprises not receiving the response to the PING command within the predetermined period of time, and wherein the status message comprises information indicating that the first computing device is not reachable (Paragraph 0087 discloses “If response to one ping is not returned in a timely manner, the NPR's ping algorithm will next attempt five pings in succession, four of which must be successfully echoed (80 percent or more). If two or more of these five pings are missed, NPR assumes a fault and, in certain embodiments, sends a status message to the Status Server of the Network Monitor & Control Server, the NMCS during its next scheduled status-report session.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. to incorporate the teachings of McIntosh et al., to not receive the response to the PING command and to indicate through the status message that the virtual gateway is not reachable, in order to inform the network manager of the fault associated with the virtual gateway, so that corrective actions can be taken to resolve the fault.
Regarding claim 10, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by the bridged gateway, a DHCP Discover message from a second computing device connected to the LAN; determining, by the bridged gateway, that the DHCP Discover message is a message to be processed by the virtual gateway; encapsulating the DHCP Discover message into a layer 3 protocol; and sending the DHCP Discover message to the first computing device via the layer 2 tunnel (Paragraph 0059 discloses the terminal 106 sending DHCP Discover message through the BRG (104) to the VGW “…after receiving a DHCP request message (e.g. DHCP DISCOVER DHCP REQUEST) issued by a terminal 106 of a network 105 of a customer X 104 through the DHCP relay 221 (or a DHCP client, not shown), the load balancer 222 can concurrently forward (or duplicate) the received DHCP request message to a plurality of DHCP processing servers 224.”).
Regarding claim 11, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 10, further comprising: receiving, by the bridged gateway via the layer 2 tunnel, a layer 3 packet that includes a layer 2 reply to the DHCP Discover message from the virtual gateway; extracting, by the bridged gateway, the layer 2 reply; and sending by the bridged gateway to the second computing device, the layer 2 reply, the layer 2 reply comprising a source media access control address of the virtual gateway (Paragraph 0060 discloses DHCP offer sent to the terminal 106 via the BRG (104) by the VGW, “When several DHCP response messages (e.g. DHCP OFFER, DHCP ACK) from the DHCP processing servers 224 are sent in reply to the DHCP request message, the load balancer 222 can send back to the requesting terminal 106 only the first received DHCP response message, the subsequent response messages received being dropped.”).
Claims 8 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Onno et al. (EP 3264678 A1) in view of Brar et al. (US20240031282 A1) in view of McIntosh et al. (US 20090013210 A1) further in view of Lan (CN 101159678 A Translated).
Regarding claim 8, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 1. Wherein in response to receiving the instruction, generating the first message for processing by the virtual gateway (Paragraph 0054 discloses the generation and transmission of the first message by the BRG “Once the BRG 104 is connected to the access network, after the physical attachment (e.g. xDSL), the BRG 104 can broadcast a DHCP request. This is caught by the DHCP server residing in the first upstream IP enabled device, which may be the Broadband Network Gateway (BNG, the old BRAS). The DHCP server (more exactly its associated AAA server) can authenticate the BRG 104 thanks to its MAC (Media Access Control) address and return the corresponding configuration. This corresponding configuration can include the BRG IP address and the GRE tunnel endpoint IP address that is the IP address of the virtual machine hosting the tunnel end point (TEP) virtual function of the virtual gateway 100.”);
Onno et al. fail to explicitly disclose receiving, by the bridged gateway from the second computing device, an instruction to provide a status of the virtual gateway.
However in an analogous art Lan teaches receiving, by the bridged gateway from the second computing device, an instruction to provide a status of the virtual gateway (Page 2 Paragraph 2 discloses “…regularly sending request message to default gateway);
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. to incorporate the teachings of Lan, receive, by the bridged gateway from the second computing device, an instruction to provide a status of the virtual gateway, in order to determine the status of the virtual gateway on demand.
Regarding claim 9, Onno et al. disclose the method of claim 1. In response to receiving the instruction, generating, by the bridged gateway, a second message for processing by the virtual gateway; sending, by the bridged gateway via the layer 2 tunnel, the second message to the first computing device for delivery to the virtual gateway; (Paragraph 0045-0045 and FIG. 1 discloses the network architecture, the Broadband Residential Gateway connected via the link layer tunnel to Virtual Gateway, “It is assumed that the gateway functionality is split in two parts, interconnected by mean of a tunnel 101, each part hosting a tunnel endpoint (TEP) 102, 103. This tunnel can be used to abstract from the underlying physical network topology while interconnecting the broadband residential gateway (BRG) {also called bridge or switch) 104 and the virtual gateway100 at the link layer.” Paragraph 0054 discloses the generation and transmission of the first message by the BRG “Once the BRG 104 is connected to the access network, after the physical attachment (e.g. xDSL), the BRG 104 can broadcast a DHCP request. This is caught by the DHCP server residing in the first upstream IP enabled device, which may be the Broadband Network Gateway (BNG, the old BRAS). The DHCP server (more exactly its associated AAA server) can authenticate the BRG 104 thanks to its MAC (Media Access Control) address and return the corresponding configuration. This corresponding configuration can include the BRG IP address and the GRE tunnel endpoint IP address that is the IP address of the virtual machine hosting the tunnel end point (TEP) virtual function of the virtual gateway 100.”);
Onno et al. fail to explicitly disclose receiving, by the bridged gateway from the second computing device, an instruction to provide a status of the virtual gateway.
However in an analogous art Lan teaches receiving, by the bridged gateway from the second computing device, an instruction to provide a status of the virtual gateway (Page 2 Paragraph 2 discloses “…regularly sending request message to default gateway);
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. to incorporate the teachings of Lan, receive, by the bridged gateway from the second computing device, an instruction to provide a status of the virtual gateway, in order to determine the status of the virtual gateway on demand.
Onno et al. and Lan fail to explicitly disclose determining, by the bridged gateway, that a reply to the first message from the virtual gateway has been received within a predetermined period of time; and in response to determining that a reply has been received within the predetermined period of time, sending a status message to a second computing device.
However in an analogous McIntosh et al. teaches determining, by the bridged gateway, that a reply to the first message from the virtual gateway has been received within a predetermined period of time (US 2009013210 A1 Paragraph 0100 discloses “Ping is a reliable, low-level, widely used program that generates an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo request. When a server or router receives an ICMP echo request, it responds with an ICMP echo response, assuming that it is set to respond to anonymous WAN (wide area network; the other side of the gateway) or Internet traffic…. A successful ping, i.e. transmitting an echo request and receiving a valid echo response is a reliable test of connectivity. By pinging resources resident on the public Internet, connectivity between client and local network and between local network and the Internet may be inferred.”); and in response to determining that a reply has been received within the predetermined period of time, sending a status message to a second computing device (Paragraph 0087 discloses “If response to one ping is not returned in a timely manner, the NPR's ping algorithm will next attempt five pings in succession, four of which must be successfully echoed (80 percent or more). If two or more of these five pings are missed, NPR assumes a fault and, in certain embodiments, sends a status message to the Status Server of the Network Monitor & Control Server, the NMCS during its next scheduled status-report session.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Onno et al. and Lan to incorporate the teachings of McIntosh et al., to determine that a reply to the first message from the virtual gateway has been received within a predetermined period of time and in response to send a status message to a second computing device, in order to inform the network management system of the satisfactory operational state of the virtual gateway.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 Samuel Dilan Rutnam whose telephone number is 703-756-1374. The examiner can normally be reached between 8:30am-5:00pm Mon-Fri.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy Kundu can be reached on 571-272-8586.
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/Samuel Dilan Rutnam/
Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
/SUJOY K KUNDU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
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