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 .
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, 7-11, 16-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Curtis et al U.S. Patent 9,509,760 in view of KAZO PG PUB 2022/0368644.
Re Claims 1, 10 and 19, Curtis et al teaches in figure 2, a Computing Resource 230 includes a Virtual packet analyzer VPA 240 configured with a packet duplication function (See Col. 9, lines 25-67); figure 2 further teaches the VPA receives network packets from a User Device 210 (a radio unit); the received packet is directed to the NIC (a physical layer) of a VLAN (virtual radio access network); the network packet includes flow, address information and payload (a plurality of data fields); the VPA determining whether to duplicate the network packet from the User Device 210 by comparing flow and/or the information associated with the network packet is satisfied (a condition defined) and if satisfied, routing the duplicate packet from the user device 210 (the radio unit) to output NIC of VLAN; figure 6, step 640 teaches generating duplicate packet and send the packet to destination (a network analysis component) for further analysis
(See Col. 10, lines 17-52).
Curtis et al fails to explicitly teach “an embedded switch of a NIC”. However, KATO teaches a smart NIC functions as an embedded switch to achieve low delay processing [0005 0008]. One skilled in the art motivated to have modified the NIC with Curtis et al with the smart NIC with the embedded switch to achieve the low delay processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Re Claims 2, 11, Curtis teaches the VPA (a network analysis component) analyzing the plurality flow and information associated with the network packet to determine whether duplication is needed.
Re Claims 7, 16, Curtis teaches the VPA determining whether the received network packets (a first network packet or a second network packet) from the User Devices (the radio unit and a second radio unit) if the flow and/or information with the packet matches information logged by the cloud computing environment (See col. 10, lines 4-16) wherein the received network packets may be duplicated when User Device is associated with a problem and thus be useful in debugging the problem (a target radio unit) wherein in response to determining the network packet from the second User Device does not match the logged information (not the target radio unit), the received network packet is not duplicated.
Re Claims 8, 17, Curtis et al teaches in figure 2, computing resources 230 includes VMs 234 and one or more HYPs 238 (See Col. 3, lines 50-55). The VMs and HYPs perform virtual functions (first and second). The Hardware field include addresses such as MAC addresses of the hardware associated with the destination (See col. 11, lines 43-59). One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have assigned a MAC address with VM (the first virtual function) and assigned the duplication function on another VM (the virtual function) based on the assigned MAC address for cost efficiency in virtualization.
Re Claims 9, 18, Applicant admits that “in a conventional approach, a top-of-rack switch may require manufacturer-specific workflows to implement a port mirroring rule leading to significant complexity in large communications networks. In contrast, an embedded switch can be programmed using a standard application programming interface API irrespective of hardware manufacturer thereby streamlining programming operations. KATO teaches a smart NIC functions as an embedded switch to achieve low delay processing [0005 0008]. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have configured the network packet duplication function with a mirroring rule with the standardized API to streamline the programing operation as claimed.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-6, 12-15 and 20 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Re Claims 3, 12 and 20, prior art fails to explicitly teach receiving scheduling information defining one or active data fields of the duplicate network packet and selectively analyzing the one or more active data fields as claimed.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANDREW LEE whose telephone number is (571)272-3130. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:30AM-5PM ET.
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/ANDREW LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2475
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