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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
Claims 1-20 are canceled.
Claims 21, 32-33 and 37 have been amended.
Claims 21-40 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the pending claims 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
I. 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.
II. CLAIMS 21-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over KRISHNAMURTHY et al (US 2019/0372858) in view of TORVI et al (US 2021/0258249).
Per claim 21, KRISHNAMURTHY et al teach a method, applied to a first communication apparatus, wherein the method comprises:
obtaining, by the first communication apparatus through a border gateway protocol (BGP) session established between a third communication apparatus and the first communication apparatus, [paras 0025-26, 0031, 0035—network fabric server establishing a BGP session between a third BGP speaker of a third node and the network fabric server for redundancy with the second BGP speaker of a second node], wherein the first BGP route comprises a first routing prefix and a first next hop, the first next hop is the second communication apparatus [paras 0004, 0031, 0039-43, 0049—routing comprises an IP routing prefix and a next hop for another node, with prefixes advertised via BGP-LS], the first communication apparatus is configured with a border gateway protocol egress peer engineering (BGP EPE) function [para 0046—EPE enables an ingress network node to steer network traffic towards a specific egress network node and a specific external interface to reach external destinations], and no BGP session is established between the first communication apparatus and the second communication apparatus when obtaining the first BGP route [paras 0014, 0043—server modifies the visualization of the topology of the network fabric to display the ordered selection of the plurality of network nodes as a segment routing path to route network traffic from a first network node in the ordered selection to a last network node; undeploying segment routing path to remove the default routing path from network node];
allocating, by the first communication apparatus, a first border gateway protocol peer segment identifier (BGP peer SID) based on the first BGP route [paras 0037, 0050-51—allocating node SIDs for composing path list for ADJ-SIDs via BGP-LS]; and
storing an association relationship between the first BGP peer SID and the first next hop [paras 0029, 0059—storing topology information from the network node along with segment identifiers of the nodes].
KRISHNAMURTHY et al teach the limitations, as applied above, and advertising segment routing information [para 0033]; yet fail to explicitly teach “a first BGP route advertised by a second communication apparatus to the third communication apparatus through a BGP session between the second communication apparatus and the third communication apparatus”.
TORVI et al teach advertising a first prefix segment with the same SID [paras 0025, 0075, 0078], and that a BGP speaker advertises to its peers only routes that it uses itself [paras 0053, 0056, 0085, 0092].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed the invention was made to combine the teachings of KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al to advertise routes; which is well known in the art for configuring BGP routers to share networks or routes with peers.
Claims 30 and 37 contains limitations that are substantially equivalent to the limitations of claim 21 and are therefore rejected under the same basis.
Per claim 33, KRISHNAMURTHY et al teach a method, applied to a controller, wherein the method comprises:
receiving a first border gateway protocol (BGP) peer SID, first additional information, and a first BGP route that are sent by a first communication apparatus, the first BGP route is obtained by the first communication apparatus through a BGP session established between the first communication apparatus and the third communication apparatus [paras 0032, 0037, 0040-43, 0046, 0050-51—allocating node SIDs for composing path list for ADJ-SIDs via BGP-LS, additional information including policy and service class; paras 0025-26, 0031, 0035—network fabric server establishing a BGP session between a third BGP speaker of a third node and the network fabric server for redundancy with the second BGP speaker of a second node], no BGP session is established between the first communication apparatus and the second communication apparatus when receiving the first BGP route [paras 0014, 0043—server modifies the visualization of the topology of the network fabric to display the ordered selection of the plurality of network nodes as a segment routing path to route network traffic from a first network node in the ordered selection to a last network node; undeploying segment routing path to remove the default routing path from network node], the first BGP route comprises a first routing prefix and a first next hop, the first next hop is the second communication apparatus [paras 0004, 0031, 0039-43, 0049—routing comprises an IP routing prefix and a next hop for another node, with prefixes advertised via BGP-LS;], and the first communication apparatus is configured with a border gateway protocol egress peer engineering (BGP EPE) function [para 0046—EPE enables an ingress network node to steer network traffic towards a specific egress network node and a specific external interface to reach external destinations];
wherein the first SID list indicates a first packet forwarding path reaching the first routing prefix [paras 0032, 0037, 0041-42, 0050-51—allocating node SIDs for composing path list for ADJ-SIDs via BGP-LS]; and
sending the first SID list to a head node of the first packet forwarding path [paras 0037, 0043-44—instantiating/deploying the preferred segment routing path at the source node by sending/pushing the ordered list of SID for the network nodes].
KRISHNAMURTHY et al teach the limitations, as applied above, and advertising segment routing information [para 0033]; yet fail to explicitly teach “wherein the first BGP route is advertised by a second communication apparatus to a third communication apparatus through a BGP session between the second communication apparatus and the third communication apparatus…the first communication apparatus allocates the BGP SID based on the first BGP route, first additional information associates the first BGP route with the first BGP peer SID; and determining, based on the first BGP route, the first additional information and the first BGP peer SID, a first SID list comprising the first BGP peer SID”.
TORVI et al teach advertising a first prefix segment with the same SID [paras 0025, 0075, 0078], and that a BGP speaker advertises to its peers only routes that it uses itself [paras 0053, 0056, 0085, 0092]. TORVI et al further teach that segment is associated with an identifier, SID and an ordered list of segments is encoded as a stack of labels wherein every node in the segment routing domain is allocated labels by the node label manager based on the index range configured for source packet routing, wherein these labels are allocated to the node segment based on the availability of the dynamic label range managed by node label manager; the SID is provided as an index to be added to an SRGB base value [paras 0045-48, 0073], and BGP peer receives the NLRI with the SR Prefix-SID TLV for allocating the respective local label for the prefix and set the outgoing label towards the neighbor [paras 0089-95, 0121].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed the invention was made to combine the teachings of KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al for advertising routes, allocating the BGP SID based on the first BGP route and a SID list comprising the first BGP peer SID; which is well known in the art for configuring BGP routers to share networks or routes with peers.
Per claim 22, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 21, TORVI et al further teach the method wherein: the third communication apparatus is a route server, and the BGP session established between the third communication apparatus and the first communication apparatus is an external border gateway protocol (EBGP) session; or the third communication apparatus is a route reflector, and the BGP session established between the third communication apparatus and the first communication apparatus is an internal border gateway protocol (IBGP) session [paras 0058, 0061, 0063, 0087-88—establishing an eBGP or iBGP session between the BGP speakers].
Claim 38 contains limitations that are substantially equivalent to the limitations of claim 22 and are therefore rejected under the same basis.
Per claim 23, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 21, TORVI et al further teach wherein the method further comprises: advertising the first BGP route, the first BGP peer SID, and first additional information to a controller, wherein the first additional information associates the first BGP route with the first BGP peer SID [Abstract, paras 0025, 0053, 0083-85, 0091-92, 0119—segment routing prefix segment identifiers (SIDS) advertised using BGP and associating the BGP route with the SID].
Claim 39 contains limitations that are substantially equivalent to the limitations of claim 23 and are therefore rejected under the same basis.
Per claim 24, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 23, TORVI et al further teach wherein the first additional information comprises the first next hop [paras 0061, 0072-73, 0078, 0092—information including next hop attribute].
Claims 36 and 40 contain limitations that are substantially equivalent to the limitations of claim 24 and are therefore rejected under the same basis.
Per claim 25, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 24, TORVI et al further teach wherein: the third communication apparatus is a route server, the first BGP route further comprises a first autonomous system (AS) identifier, the first AS identifier identifies an AS to which the second communication apparatus belongs, and the first additional information comprises the first AS identifier; or the third communication apparatus is a route reflector, the first BGP route further comprises an originator identifier (Originator ID), and the first additional information comprises the originator ID [paras 0051-52, 0058, 0061, 0063, 0065, 0073—routers in different autonomous systems exchange reachability information, address family identifier].
Per claim 26, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 23, TORVI et al further teach wherein advertising the first additional information to the controller comprises: sending a border gateway protocol link state (BGP LS) packet to the controller, wherein the BGP LS packet comprises the first additional information [paras 0088, 0122-124, 0162-163—BGP-LS session and route to EPE controller comprising information, BGP-LS attribute and characteristics].
Per claim 27, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 21, TORVI et al further teach wherein the method further comprises: receiving a packet, wherein the packet comprises the first BGP peer SID; and forwarding the packet to the first next hop based on the association relationship between the first BGP peer SID and the first next hop [paras 0053, 0056, 0058, 0061-63, 0083, 0089, 0092-94, 0099—packet comprises BGP speaker and forwarding to next hop, while BGP routers peering with a BGP router in another AS generally run eBGP, BGP peer node associated with SR prefix SID].
Per claim 28, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 23, TORVI et al further teach wherein the method further comprises: advertising connection type information to the controller, wherein the connection type information indicates a type of a connection between the first communication apparatus and the second communication apparatus [paras 0016, 0025, 0044, 0083—SR defines many different SR segment types, an anycast segment is also a type of prefix segment that identifies a set of routers to advertise the same prefix with the same SID value, attribute type code].
Per claim 29, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 21, TORVI et al further teach wherein the first BGP peer SID is an SRv6 SID [paras 0023, 0041, 0046, 0083-84—Segment Routing over IPv6].
Per claim 31, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 30, TORVI et al further teach wherein the method further comprises: advertising the second BGP route, the second BGP peer SID, and second additional information to a controller, wherein the second additional information associates the second BGP route with the second BGP peer SID [Abstract, paras 0025, 0053, 0056, 0063-65, 0073-78—advertising routes BGP SIDs and associating the related peering connectivity].
Per claim 32, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 21, KRISHNAMURTHY et al further teach wherein: the first BGP peer SID is a BGP peer node SID; the first BGP peer SID is a BGP peer adjacency SID; or the first BGP peer SID is a BGP peer set SID [paras 0033-34, 0037, 0046—ADJ-SID, adjacency segments ID via BGP-LS; TORVI et al: paras 0023, 0025, 0083-85, 0091-95, 0121-130—BGP prefix segment identifier SID].
Per claim 34, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 33, TORVI et al further teach wherein determining, based on the first BGP route, the first additional information and the first BGP peer SID, the first SID list comprising the first BGP peer SID comprises: determining, based on the first routing prefix, the first packet forwarding path reaching the first routing prefix; and determining the first SID list based on the first additional information and the first packet forwarding path [paras 0023, 0025, 0083-85, 0089-95, 0121-130—BGP prefix segment identifier SID, BGP peer receives the NLRI with the SR Prefix-SID TLV for allocating the respective local label for the prefix and set the outgoing label towards the neighbor, an ordered list of segments is encoded as a stack of labels; KRISHNAMURTHY et al: paras 0032, 0037, 0040-43, 0046, 0050-51—allocating node SIDs for composing path list for ADJ-SIDs via BGP-LS].
Per claim 35, KRISHNAMURTHY et al with TORVI et al teach the method according to claim 33, KRISHNAMURTHY et al wherein the third communication apparatus is a route server or a route reflector [paras 0024-25—network fabric management server is configured to run Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), and as such may function as a BGP speaker, third BGP speaker].
Conclusion
III. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to Applicant's disclosure: USPN 11991023; US 2022/0217084; USPN 9912577.
IV. 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.
V. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KRISTIE D SHINGLES whose telephone number is (571)272-3888. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Thursday 10am-7pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Kamal Divecha can be reached on 571-272-5863. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/KRISTIE D SHINGLES/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2453
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