DETAILED ACTION
This office action is in response to the Applicants arguments filed 11/14/2025. Claims 1-5 and 7-20, 24 are examined and pending.
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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 10, 19 and 20 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.
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.
Claims 1, 2, 7-9 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu et al. (U.S. 2018/0278541 A1, hereinafter “Wu”) in view of Liu (U.S. 11894978 B1, hereinafter “Liu”) in further view of Wang et al. (U.S. 2021/0211359 A1, hereinafter “Wang”).
As to claims 1 and 19, Wu discloses a software defined network (SDN) controller, comprising:
at least one processor; and at least one memory storing computer instructions, the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, causing the SDN controller (para. [0009]) to:
receive a first message from a first network device controlled by SDN, wherein the first message includes type information indicating that a type of the first message is a resource report type and resource information of a computing node associated with the first network device (para. [0009]-[0010] and para. [0071]-[0073]; discloses SDN controller discloses may check a health status of the serving node in the service cluster from different network levels in any one of or a combination of three manners of port status (PortStatus) monitoring, link status detection, or flow table monitoring, and determine, according to a health check result, whether an IP address of any online virtual machine of the service cluster fail ); and
determine, based at least on the first message, resources of a SDN domain in which the SDN controller is located (para. [0010]; discloses the SDN controller obtains resource load information or traffic load information of each online virtual machine in the service cluster, and selects a virtual machine with minimum resource load or minimum traffic load as the target virtual machine.).
However, Wu does not explicitly disclose the controller sending the resource information of the computing node including at least one of computing power information of the computing node or service information of the computing node.
In an analogous art, Liu discloses the controller receiving the resource information of the computing node including at least one of computing power information of the computing node or service information of the computing node (column 3, lines 8-20; discloses information module for controlling the computing power nodes and access terminals to send computing power information to the switch using L4 network protocol; controlling the switch to upload the computing power information to the distributed SDN sub-controller; controlling the distributed SDN sub-controller… and uploading computing power information, switch state information and network quality information to the SDN master controller).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the SDN controller in Wu by incorporating a function to receive computing power information as taught by Liu in order to help reduce network fluctuation and topology resource consumption to improve computing power scheduling efficiency. (Liu, column 6, lines 54-67)
However, Wu-Liu does not explicitly disclose first message is encapsulated into a first OpenFlow (OF) Packet-In message.
In an analogous art, Wang discloses the first message is encapsulated into a first OpenFlow (OF) Packet-In message.(para.[0044], [0046]; discloses controller receives the LLDP message in the form of a packet_in message in the OPENFLOW).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Wu-Liu by incorporating LLDP message in the form of packet-in message in the OPENFLOW message as taught by Wang in order to easily communicate with other systems.
As to claim 2, Wu-Liu-Wang discloses the SDN controller of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the SDN controller to: transmit a first response message to the first network device, wherein the first response message indicates an acknowledgement of the first message (Wu, para.[0080]; discloses [0080] Step S53. The SDN controller 30 parses a packet source and destination information of the service request packet, determines a service cluster corresponding to the service request packet according to destination IP address information of the service request packet, selects the serving node A1 in the service cluster A as a target serving node according to a preset load balancing policy, calculates forwarding information between the user 1 and the edge switch 201 of the serving node A1, generates respective forwarding flow tables of the edge switch 201 and the edge switch 200 according to the determined forwarding information, and respectively delivers the respective forwarding flow tables to the edge switch 201 of the serving node A1 and the edge switch 200 of the user 1. This response is based on received first message from the user via edge switch ).
As to claim 7, Wu-Liu-Wang discloses the SDN controller of claim 3, wherein the second message is encapsulated into a second OpenFlow (OF) Packet-In message separate from the first message (Wang, para.[0046]; discloses controller receives the LLDP message in the form of a packet_in message in the OPENFLOW).
As to claim 8, Wu-Liu-Wang discloses of the SDN controller of claim 1, wherein the first message and the second message separately carry the type information via a reason field (Wu, para.[0055]; discloses the ARP request packet is filled with special field that represents that the destination MAC address is to be filled by a responder).
As to claim 9, Wu-Liu-Park discloses the SDN controller of claim 2, wherein the first response message and the second response message are separately encapsulated into an OF Packet-Out message (Wang, para. [0046]; discloses the controller sends out a packet-out message node M and then node N separately)
Claims 10-18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu in view of Wang.
As to claims 10 and 20, Liu discloses a network device controlled by a software defined network (SDN), comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory storing computer instructions, the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, causing the network device (switch) to:
receive a resource report message from an associated computing node, wherein the resource report message includes resource information of the associated computing node (column 5, lines 48-56; discloses computing power node sends resource information to one of the switches through the gateway wherein resource information includes type of service , the type and usage of computing and storage resources), generate a first message based on the resource report message, wherein the first message includes type information indicating that a type of the first message is a resource report type and the resource information and transmit the first message to an SDN controller (column 6, lines 10-30; discloses when a packet arrives at the first switch device node with the network telemetry function, the switch matches and parses the packet and mirrors different fields of the packet, such as the packet header and data, and inserts an INT header encapsulating the specified telemetry information at the appropriate location of the packet according to different network functions and protocols, and encapsulates the telemetry information data specified in the INT header generated by the switch into metadata. The telemetry information data specified in the INT header generated by the switch is encapsulated into metadata and inserted into the INT header and finally forwards the packet with the INT header to the SDN controller).
However, Liu does not explicitly disclose first message is encapsulated into a first OpenFlow (OF) Packet-In message.
In an analogous art, Wang discloses the first message is encapsulated into a first OpenFlow (OF) Packet-In message.(para.[0044], [0046]; discloses controller receives the LLDP message in the form of a packet_in message in the OPENFLOW).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Liu by incorporating LLDP message in the form of packet-in message in the OPENFLOW message as taught by Wang in order to easily communicate with other systems.
As to claim 11, Liu-Wang discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the network device to: receive a first response message from the SDN controller, wherein the first response message indicates an acknowledgement of the first message (Liu, column 5, lines 25-40; discloses protocol can be used to transmit computing power information that includes ACK and keepalives message from the SDN controller).
As to claim 14, Liu-Wang discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the network device to: receive a second forwarding rule from the SDN controller (Liu, column 12, line 33-40; discloses policy that is determined by SDN master controller and using policy in the network with other devices).
As to claim 15, Liu-Wang discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein resource information of the computing node includes at least one of the following: computing power information of the computing node, or service information of the computing node (Liu, column 5, lines 48-56; discloses computing power node sends resource information to one of the switches through the gateway wherein resource information includes type of service , the type and usage of computing and storage resources).
As to claim 16, Liu-Wang discloses the network device of claim 12, wherein the second message is encapsulated into a second OpenFlow (OF) Packet-In message separate from the first message (Wang, para.[0046]; discloses controller receives the LLDP message in the form of a packet_in message in the OPENFLOW) .
As to claim 17, Liu-Wang discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the first message and the second message separately carry the type information via a reason field (column 6, lines 10-30; discloses packets can each carry a separate type information in the header to indicate whether they are telemetry packets or other packets).
As to claim 18, Liu-Wang discloses the network device of claim 11, wherein the first response message and a second response message are separately encapsulated into an OF Packet-Out message, the second response message being received from the SDN controller and indicating an acknowledgement of a second message.
(Wang, para. [0046]; discloses the controller sends out a packet-out message node M and then node N separately)
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-5 and 12,13 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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.
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/JOE CHACKO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2457