Detailed Action
1. This Office Action is responsive to the Amendment filed 01/27/2026. Claims 1-20 are presented for examination. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
2. Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, or 365(c) is acknowledged.
Terminal Disclaimer
3. The terminal disclaimer filed on 01/27/2026 disclaiming the terminal portion of any patent granted on this application which would extend beyond the expiration date of the full statutory term of prior patent number 12,068,959 has been reviewed and is accepted. The terminal disclaimer has been recorded.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
4. The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
5. Claims 1-6, 9-12, 15-16 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Shen et al. (US 2020/0413283 A1), hereinafter “Shen”.
6. As to claim 1, Shen teaches a method, performed at least in part by an SD-WAN controller, the method comprising:
onboarding a tenant with a resource profile onto a first multi-tenant edge device, wherein the resource profile defines a customizable traffic allowance per transport interface for the tenant on the first multi-tenant edge device ([0051]: SD-WAN controller 114 may determine or obtain an initial or default centralized QoS policy 222 for a particular TLOC includes a downstream bandwidth of 10 Mbps and a bandwidth shaper ration of 100 percent);
receiving, from the first multi-tenant edge device, information including a first weight per transport interface of the first multi-tenant edge device for the tenant (Abstract: receiving, from each of the plurality of branch edge routers, a transmit location (TLOC) publication comprising a quality of service (QoS) attribute of one or more TLOCs configured on the branch edge router);
transmitting, to a second multi-tenant edge device, the information including the first weight per transport interface ([0052-0053]: SD-WAN controller 114 may publish the TLOCs with “downstream-bandwidth” and also “bandwidth shaper ratio” from brand edge router 104 to all of other edge routers within the fabric);
receiving, from the second multi-tenant edge device, information including a second weight per transport interface of the second multi-tenant edge device for the tenant (Abstract: receiving, from each of the plurality of branch edge routers, a transmit location (TLOC) publication comprising a quality of service (QoS) attribute of one or more TLOCs configured on the branch edge router); and
transmitting, to the first multi-tenant edge device, the information including the second weight per transport interface ([0052-0053]: SD-WAN controller 114 may publish the TLOCs with “downstream-bandwidth” and also “bandwidth shaper ratio” from brand edge router 104 to all of other edge routers within the fabric).
7. As to claim 2, Shen teaches the method of claim 1, wherein a weight per transport interface for individual transport interfaces of a multi-tenant edge device is based at least in part on a re-usable tenant tiering profile comprising: transport interfaces the tenant is allowed to use; and bandwidth the tenant is allowed on individual transport interfaces the tenant is allowed to use ([0058]: Branch edge router 104 may enforce a QoS policy when the ingress WAN utilization approaches different levels of bandwidth utilization threshold (e.g., 85%, 95%, 100% of total WAN capability)
8. As to claim 3, Shen teaches the method of claim 1, wherein onboarding the tenant further comprising: transmitting, to the first multi-tenant edge device, a QoS for a VPN group defined for the tenant; receiving, from the first multi-tenant edge device, QoS parameters for the VPN group on the first multi-tenant edge device; and transmitting, to the second multi-tenant edge device, QoS parameters for the VPN group on the second multi-tenant edge device ([0083-0084]: the SD-WAN controller transmits the updated QoS policy to the plurality of edge routers. In some embodiments, OMP may be used to receive and/or transmit QoS information between branch edge routers, and SDN controller, and aggregation edge routers).
9. As to claim 4, Shen teaches the method of claim 1, wherein information including a weight per transport interface of a multi-tenant edge device for the tenant is transmitted as part of a Transport Locator (TLOC) advertisement ([0053]: Branch edge router may publish its own TLOCs with QoS specific attributes like “downstream-bandwidth” and/or “bandwidth shaper ratio” per TLOC basis).
10. As to claim 5, Shen teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the tenant is a first tenant and further comprising, onboarding a second tenant to the first multi-tenant edge device according to a second resource profile, wherein onboarding the second tenant to the first multi-tenant edge device comprises sharing bandwidth of individual transport interfaces of the first multi-tenant edge device with the first tenant ([0030]: For a typical enterprise wide area network (WAN) deployment, bandwidth availability at each site may differ… A typical retailer deployment may have a 1.5 Mbps Ti line available at a branch for MPLS path, and 10M digital subscriber line (DSL) or 50 Mbps private virtual local area network (PVLAN) interfaces for load-balancing and/or backup).
11. As to claim 6, Shen teaches the method of claim 5, further comprising maximizing available bandwidth for the first tenant and the second tenant across individual transport interfaces of the first multi-tenant edge device by automatically adjusting first weights for individual transport interfaces for the first tenant and second weights for individual transport interfaces for the second tenant on the first multi-tenant edge device ([0054]: As a particular example, “bandwidth shaper ratio” may be a default value of 100 with range of 1-100, which means to apply the parent-shaper for per-tunnel QoS policy for the specific TLOC with “downstream-bandwidth” * 100/100; [0071]: Additionally, the SD-WAN controller may adjust the TLOC weight value based on the remote WAN bandwidth usage as well to influence ingress non-ECMP load-balance for the specific branch site).
12. As to claims 9-12, 15-16 and 18-20, claims 9-12, 15-16 and 18-20 are corresponding system and non-transitory computer-readable media claims that recite similar limitations as of method claims 1-6 and do not contain any additional limitations with respect to novelty and/or inventive steps; therefore, they are rejected under the same rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
13. Claims 7-8, 13-14 and 17 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.
14. Further references of interest are cited on Form PTO-892, which is an attachment to this Office Action.
15. A shortened statutory period for reply to this action is set to expire THREE (3) months from the mailing date of this communication. See 37 CFR 1.134.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to QUANG N NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571) 272-3886.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, KAMAL B. DIVECHA, can be reached at (571) 272-5863. The fax phone number for the organization is (571) 273-8300.
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/QUANG N NGUYEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2441