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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 5/29/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
This office action is in response to amendment/reconsideration filed on 5/29/2026, the amendment/reconsideration has been considered. Claims 1, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 15, 19 and 20 have been amended. Claims 1-20 are pending for examination as cited below.
Response to Arguments
Applicants’ arguments with respect to the amended claim(s) have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection necessitated by claim amendments.
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) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Boutros et al. (Pub. No.: US 2018/0097734 A1), hereinafter “Bou” in view of “Farkas et al. (Pub. No.: US 2015/0222492 A1), hereinafter “Far” and further in view of Khera et al. (Pub. No.: US 2015/0139224 A1), hereinafter “Kher”.
As to claim 1. Bou discloses, a method for using gateways in a Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) network (Bou, [0003], OSPF), the method comprising:
receiving, by an access node, a first Type-Length-Value (TLV) from a first gateway, wherein the first TLV comprises a Client Media Access Control (CMAC) address for the first gateway, an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the first gateway, and a layer 2 (L2) Instance Service Identifiers (I-SID) associated with the first gateway (Bou, [0025], advertising, by edge service gateways (ESGs), availability of an anycast inner IP address and an anycast virtual extensible local area network tunnel endpoint ( VTEP) IP address at a hypervisor VTEP IP address to peers on an ESG uplink (see paragraph), and a packet sent to an anycast address is forwarded to a nearest node (a closest node or a shortest path) according to an internal gateway protocol (IGP) (e.g., open shortest path first (OSPF) or intermediate system to intermediate system (IS-IS)) (see paragraph [0019]);
receiving, by the access node, a second TLV from a second gateway, wherein the second TLV comprises the CMAC address, the IP address, and the L2 I-SID (Bou, [0002], wherein multiple edge service gateways (ESGs) may use a same anycast inner IP address and a same anycast inner media access control (MAC) address (see paragraph);
in response to determining that the L2 I-SID exists in Link State Databases (LSDB) of the access node, determining that the first gateway is closer to the access node than the second gateway (Bou, [0019], and a packet sent to an anycast address is forwarded to a nearest node (a closest node or a shortest path) according to an internal gateway protocol (IGP) (e.g., open shortest path first (OSPF) or intermediate system to intermediate system (IS-IS));
storing the CMAC address in a database to point to the first gateway based on the determination (Bou, storing the anycast VTEP IP address as available via physical forwarding elements that have advertised availability of the anycast VTEP IP address in a forwarding table (see paragraph [0048]), wherein a physical forwarding element will continue to advertise the availability of the anycast VTEP IP address as long as one ESG is executing on a host connected to the physical forwarding element (see paragraph [0035]).
Bou however is silent to disclose explicitly, "receiving, by an access node, a first Type-Length- Value (TLV) from a first gateway, wherein the first TLV comprises a Client Media Access Control (CMAC) address for the first gateway, an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the first gateway, and a layer 2 (L2) Instance Service Identifiers (I-SID) associated with the first gateway", and "determining that the L2 I-SID exists in Link State Databases (LSDB) of the access node".
For, however teaches a similar concept in the same field of endeavor e.g., the different features would be easily derived from the disclosure of D2 (see paragraphs [0054], [0057): a node, within a network complying with an implementation of multiple mac registration protocol (MMRP) and using a shortest path bridging (SPB) protocol, sends a set of MMRPDUs to links associated with a service instance, the set of MMRPDUs containing a set of MAC addresses are encapsulated in a set of Ethernet frames containing references to the service instance, and the set of MAC addresses are stored in the encapsulating frames in a type length value (TLV) field when other protocols are used; and see paragraph [0067): if an extracted service instance is associated with a backbone virtual LAN identifier (B-VID) that a designated forwarder (DF) within an internetworking routing module (620) is proxy for, the internetworking routing module extracts the service instance identifier (e.g., an I-SID) and MAC addresses interested in the service instance identifier and stored in an internetworking database (622), the internetworking database may be a frame forwarding database on a control plane, and it may be used for frame forwarding using an implementation of intermediate system-intermediate system (IS-IS) protocol).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the instant application it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skilled in the art to incorporate the teachings of “Far” into those of “Bou” to provide a method involves sending a set of multiple media access control (MAC) registration protocol data units (MMRPDUs) to a set of links associated with a service instance, where the MMRPDUs contain a set of MAC addresses interested in the instance including MAC addresses not received from the links. A filtering unit is installed at a node (1000) such that an Ethernet frame is forwarded to destination if the Ethernet frame is destined to interested nodes identified by another set of MAC addresses. Logical loop free topologies are created by implementing a protocol.
Bou and Far however are silent to disclose explicitly, determining a first cost metric associated with the first gateway based on a first cost value included in the first TLV received from the first gateway;
determining a second cost metric associated with the second gateway based on a second cost value included in the second TLV received from the first gateway.
Kher discloses a similar concept in the same field of endeavor including, determining a first cost metric associated with the first gateway based on a first cost value included in the first TLV received from the first gateway (Kher, [0010], TLV contain metric (cost) information, “advertising the routes by the router using a type length variable (TLV), wherein the TLV contains metric information to be used as a first tie-breaker when selecting routes.”[0027], another ISIS router (e.g., router 30) in the network 16 receives the route advertisement.” Finally, [0035], “determining for a route advertisement if a particular administrative sub TLV is present in the route advertisement. This is the router checking TLV cost value.);
determining a second cost metric associated with the second gateway based on a second cost value included in the second TLV received from the first gateway (Kher, [0028], “this allows a network operator to inject routes into ISIS with different external metrics and use the external metric as the first tie breaker when selecting routes.” Different routers (gateways) advertise different TLV’s with different cost values e.g., first TLV[Wingdings font/0xE0] first cost value [Wingdings font/0xE0] first cost metric, second TLV [Wingdings font/0xE0] second cost value [Wingdings font/0xE0] second cost metric. Hence the claim limitation of two gateway / two TLV / two metric requirement is met.).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the instant application it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skilled in the art to incorporate the teachings of “Kher” into those of “Bou and Far” to provide a use of an external metric as the primary tie-breaker in ISIS route selections. A set of routes are identified that are to be advertised by the router as external routes within a network. The routes are advertised by the router using a Type Length Variable (TLV), wherein the TLV contains metric information to be used as a first tiebreaker when selecting routes.
As to claims 8 and 15 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 1 above. It is further noted that the amended portion of claim 15 is well known in the art as evident by (Kuwata et al. Pub. No.: 20170244572 A1, [0057]).
As to claims 2, 9 and 16. The combined system of Bou, Far and Kher discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, wherein the first gateway has a first priority for forwarding the packet and the second gateway has a second priority for forwarding a packet (Bou, [0019]: such a nearest node along a route is calculated based on administrative distance values, used to determine a priority, with larger values indicating lower priority types of route).
As to claims 3, 10 and 17. The combined system of Bou, Far and Kher discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, determining that the first gateway is unavailable; and updating the database such that the CMAC address points to the second gateway as the first priority for forwarding the packet (Bou, [0048]; claim 4; and figure 8: an edge gateway in the plurality of edge gateways advertises the availability of the anycast VTEP IP address to a forwarding element connecting the edge gateway to an underlay network, and an physical forwarding element 845 runs an IGP (interior gateway protocol) that recognizes physical forwarding elements 840A and 840B as being a next hop for the VTEP IP address (e.g., through a forwarding table that stores the anycast VTEP IP address as available via the physical forwarding elements that have advertised the availability of the any cast VTEP IP address)).
As to claim 4. The combined system of Bou, Far and Kher discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, receiving a third TLV from a third gateway, wherein the third TLV comprises the CMAC address, the IP address, and the L2 I-SID (Bou, [0019]: anycast addressing allows a same address to be used for multiple destinations (redundant destinations), a packet sent to the anycast address is forwarded to a nearest node (also referred to as a closest node or along a shortest path) according to an internal gateway protocol (IGP) (e.g., open shortest path first (OSPF), routing information protocol (RIP), intermediate system to intermediate system (IS-IS), etc.), and such a nearest node along a route is calculated based on administrative distance values, used to determine a priority, with larger values indicating lower priority types of route);
determining that the third gateway is closer to the access node than the first and second gateways; and updating the database such that the CMAC address points to the third gateway as the first priority for forwarding the packet (Far, [0037], [0073]: a internetworking node 802 may create SPBM (shortest path bridging-MAC mode) service identifier and unicast sub address TLVs in order to leak the extracted MMRP information into a control plane database for frame forwarding using ISIS, and the I-SID (identifying a service instance) and associated MAC addresses are saved in the control plane database for frame forwarding).
As to claims 5, 12 and 19. The combined system of Bou, Far and Kher discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, in response to the second cost metric being greater than the first cost metric, determining that the first gateway is closer to the access node than the second gateway (Bou, [0049]: the load balancing protocol gives more weight to a particular physical forwarding element based on the total capacity of the edge service gateways (ESGs) connected to the physical forwarding element as opposed to the number of ESGs (e.g., one ESG that is provisioned to handle twice as much traffic as another ESG being assigned a weight that is twice (or some other multiple) as great as the other ESG)).
As to claims 6, 13 and 20. The combined system of Bou, Far and Kher discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, wherein: determining the first cost metric comprises determining a first combination of the first cost value and a cost value of a first link between the access node and the first gateway, and determining the second cost metric comprises determining a second combination of the second cost value and a cost value of a second link between the access node and the second gateway (Bou, [0019]; a nearest node along a route is calculated based on administrative distance values, used to determine a priority, with larger values indicating lower priority types of route), and D2 (see paragraph [0072]: a SPB (shortest path bridging) network forwards Ethernet frames along shortest path trees, each node within the SPB network may contain a filtering database (FDB) to guide Ethernet frame forwarding, in other word, each node within the SPB network contains a local view of the link state of the network).
As to claims 7 and 14. The combined system of Bou, Far and Kher discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, wherein the first gateway and the access node are located in a first network area in a multi-area network and the second gateway is located in a second network area of the multi-area network, and wherein the second network area is different from the first network area (Bou, [0024]; and figure 1: edge service gateways (ESGs) 115A-X are connected to an external network 150 and provide virtual machines or other data compute nodes connected to a data center fabric 130 access to the external network 150 by performing routing services), and D2 (see paragraph [0065]; and figure 6: an internetworking node 602 interconnects an MMRP network 610 and a non-MMRP network 612).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Please see the attached PTO-892.
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/Tauqir Hussain/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2446
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