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 .
1. This communication is in response to amendments filed on 04/09/2026.
Claims 1, 2, 8, 10, 11, 17, and 19 have been amended. Claims 1-20 remain pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
2. Applicant’s amendments to claims 2 and 11 in response to the previously raised rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) have been considered and obviate previous objection, as such the rejection is hereby withdrawn.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
3. Applicant’s amendments to claim 1 specifying that the claimed elements are implemented at least partially in hardware in response to the previously raised rejection of claims 1-9 under 35 U.S.C. 101 has been considered and obviates previous objection, as such the rejection is hereby withdrawn.
Double Patenting
4. In response to the nonstatutory double patenting rejection of claims 1-20 over claims of US 12,081,444, Applicant \ submitted that a Terminal Disclaimer is premature as the claims have not been allowed. The rejection is therefore held in abeyance until allowance of claims 1-20.
Response to Arguments
5. Applicant's arguments asserting that the Bowers reference does not teach or disclose the claimed invention as described in amended independent claims 1, 10 and 19 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Specifically, these claims have been amended to incorporate subject matter of previous claim 8 stating, “wherein the excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to cause a packet switcher to send data units belonging to the flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set to a different egress queue than when the flow has the excessive rate indicator not set”. Applicant’s basis for this argument is that Bowers states routing packets in the heavy flow to a “heavy receive queue” contrary to the claim language for sending data units belonging to a flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set to a “different egress queue”.
During the interview on 04/08/2026 it was discussed that, although the terminology is different, the heavy receive queues in Bowers eventually transmit the received packets to a host via interface 126, thereby acting as an egress queue. However, in view of the amendment to the claims to include a new limitation of storing the received data units in a plurality of ingress queues, the grounds of rejection has changed. Specifically, receive queue 118 and heavy receive queue 120 are now cited as corresponding to the claimed plurality of ingress queues. Synonymous to the claim language, Bowers expressly recites that the receive queue 118 and heavy receive queue 120 store received packets prior to transfer.
Regarding the amended limitation, previously recited in claim 8, it is now the portions of Bowers directed to transmission of heavy flows which is relied upon for teaching this subject matter. Specifically, Bowers teaches that queues 158 and heavy queues 160 are associated with cores 156 for processing the content of the packets. As cited below, paragraphs [0038] and [0039] of Bowers describe that, after a transmitted flow is identified as heavy, a driver causes the traffic of this flow to be directed to a different appropriate core used to transmit the heavy flow and selects a transmit queue on the appropriate core. These transmit queues associated with cores used to transmit heavy flows which are selected to transmit flows identified as heavy are unambiguously within the scope of the claimed egress queue.
It is noted that the language of this limitation does not link any of the features in this limitation to the received data units or flows described in the previous limitations of the claims. In order to distinguish from the teachings of Bowers, Applicant is urged to include language further describing the pipeline architecture illustrated in claim 7, such as the plurality of ports associated with the plurality of ingress arbiters and processors processing and dividing received data units to be switched by the traffic manager and transferred to an egress pipeline where appropriate action is taken on flows having an excessive rate indicator set.
The rejection is therefore maintained.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
6. Claims 1, 2, 10, 11, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a) as being anticipated by Bowers et al. (US 2019/0260686).
Regarding claim 1, Bowers teaches a network switching apparatus comprising:
a plurality of communication interfaces, implemented at least partially in hardware, configured to receive and send data units (Network interface 100 includes one or more ports 102-0 to 102-A. A port can represent a physical port or virtual port. A packet received at a port 102-0 to 102-A is provided to transceiver 104, [0019]; Switch 704 can route packets or frames of any format or in accordance with any specification from any port 702-0 to 702-X to any of ports 706-0 to 706-Y (or vice versa), [0060]);
ingress packet processing logic, implemented at least partially in hardware, configured to:
identify flows among a plurality of flows to which received data units belong (classifier 110 can determine a flow associated with a TCP packet from one or more of: a destination port, a destination IP address, a destination port, or a destination IP address, [0019]; A flow classification can be performed to determine a flow associated with the received packet. The flow of the received packet can be determined based on header or payload properties of the received packet (or both), [0040]); and
store the received data units in a plurality of ingress queues (Heavy receive queue 120 can store packets prior to transfer to a heavy queue among heavy queues 160-0 to 160-N, [0022]; RSS 116 stores the received packets into receive queue 118 for transfer to host 150, [0023]);
a flow tracker, implemented at least partially in hardware, configured to:
calculate a data rate at which data units for one or more flows among the plurality of the flows are being received (At 414, a flow counter is read for the current flow. For example, a determination of a packet receive rate can be made to determine a rate of bytes of received packets per second, [0043]; The flow counter can indicate a packet receive rate of the flow. For example, the packet receive rate can be based on the determined received packet bytes over a measure of time (e.g., bytes/second), [0044]); and
set an excessive rate indicator for each flow of the one or more flows that has a data rate that exceeds a particular threshold (The flow can be identified as a heavy flow based on whether the packet receive rate of the flow over the interval of time meets or exceeds a threshold. If the flow is determined to be a heavy flow, then 458 follows where a flow rule is added to identify the flow as a heavy flow and subsequent received packets in the heavy flow can be directed to a heavy queue, [0044]);
an excessive rate policy resolver, implemented at least partially in hardware, configured to cause a packet switcher to send data units, belonging to a flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set, to a different egress queue than when the flow has the excessive rate indicator not set (After the transmitted flow is identified as heavy, the driver could create a filter to direct the receive traffic of this flow to an appropriate core associated with the core used to transmit the heavy flow, [0038]; provide a hint to the driver in order to select a transmit queue on an appropriate core, [0039]; Flows consist of transmit and receive queue pairs, so if a heavy flow is moved to core A, there is a corresponding transmit queue associated with that core A for the flow to use and the corresponding transmit queue can be used to transmit a flow, [0039]).
Regarding claim 2, Bowers teaches the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the flow tracker is further configured to track an associated data rate for each flow among the one or more flows by incrementing a rate counter assigned to the flow whenever a data unit belonging to the flow is received (Flow counter 112 can determine a count of received bytes per second for a flow of TCP packets (or other types of packets), [0020]).
Claim 10 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 1, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
Claim 11 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 2, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
Claim 19 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 1, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
7. Claims 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bowers in view of Ikeda et al. (CA 2,190,716).
Regarding claim 3, Bowers teaches the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the flow tracker is further configured to track an activity status of each flow among the one or more flows (Flow counter 112 can determine a count of received bytes per second for a flow of TCP packets (or other types of packets), [0020]).
However, Bowers does not explicitly disclose updating an idle timeout value assigned to the flow when a data unit belonging to the flow is received.
Ikeda teaches tracking an activity status of each flow among one or more flows by updating an idle timeout value assigned to the flow when a data unit belonging to the flow is received (In the server control section 50, when the received VC in the VC table 52 is in an idle state, the state is changed to active, page 5 lines 14-18).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to track idle and active states in the system/method of Bowers as suggested by Ikeda when counting transmitted data rates. One would be motivated to combine these teachings because maintaining an updated status of a particular channel and timing between received packets would enable better management of buffer and flow control.
Claim 12 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 3, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
8. Claims 4 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bowers in view of Waclawsky et al. (US 2014/0334296).
Regarding claim 4, Bowers does not explicitly disclose the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the flow tracker is further configured to ignore flows among the plurality of flows that have an indication of one or both of: an inactive activity status or a low rate at which data units are being received.
Waclawsky teaches wherein a flow tracker is further configured to ignore flows among a plurality of flows that have an indication of one or both of: an inactive activity status or a low rate at which data units are being received (some traffic flows (e.g., short flows, low rate flows, etc.) have little impact on network congestion such that reducing their transmission rate may diminish quality of service (QoS) for those flows without meaningfully mitigating congestion, [0018]; congestion conditions may be ignored for short flows, high priority flows, flows being communicated at low transmission rates, flows destined for wireless networks, or any other situation in which reducing the transmission rate is undesirable, [0019]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to ignore flows being communicated at low transmission rates in the system/method of Bowers as suggested by Waclawsky when monitoring flows for congestion conditions. One would be motivated to combine these teachings so as to not use resources for tracking flows which have little impact or are unlikely to meaningfully contribute to congestion.
Claim 13 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 4, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
9. Claims 5, 9, 14, 18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bowers in view of Caia et al. (US 2003/0206522).
Regarding claim 5, Bowers does not explicitly disclose the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to tag data units belonging to the flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set with an excessive-rate or congestion indicator.
Caia teaches wherein an excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to tag data units belonging to a flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set with an excessive-rate or congestion indicator (A non-compliant state 120 means that the flow rate is above its programmed threshold; that is, the flow rate policy is violated and subsequent packets are tagged or dropped, [0009]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to tag packets in a flow being transmitted at a rate above a threshold in the system/method of Bowers as suggested by Caia in order to indicate which packets belong to a flow associated with certain conditions. One would be motivated to combine these teachings so that network elements can identify and properly process packets of a flow which should be treated differently.
Regarding claim 9, Bowers does not explicitly disclose the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to cause a packet switcher to drop data units that belong to the flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set at a higher rate than one or more flows that do not have the excessive rate indicator set.
Caia teaches wherein an excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to cause a packet switcher to drop data units that belong to a flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set at a higher rate (A non-compliant state 120 means that the flow rate is above its programmed threshold; that is, the flow rate policy is violated and subsequent packets are tagged or dropped, [0009]) than one or more flows that do not have the excessive rate indicator set (A compliant state 110 means that the flow rate is below its programmed threshold; that is, the flow rate policy is met and subsequent packets are not tagged, [0009]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to drop packets from a flow with a very high data rate in the system/method Bowers as suggested by Cai in order to avoid excessive congestion and buffer overflow. One would be motivated to combine these teachings to ensure enforcement of network policies and fair resource distribution.
Claim 14 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 5, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
Claim 18 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 9, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
Claim 20 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 9, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
10. Claims 6 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bowers in view of Akahane et al. (US 2005/0276230).
Regarding claim 6, Bowers teaches the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the excessive rate policy resolver is configured to take action on one or more of the data units belonging to the flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set (If driver 168 detects the bytes/second of packets in a flow exceeds a threshold, the flow can be considered heavy and driver 168 instructs filter 114 to route packets in the heavy flow to a heavy receive queue 120, [0021]; flow 1 and flow 5 are re-classified from normal non-heavy flows to heavy flows. A network interface filter directs the heavy flows 1 and 5 to respective queues Q2 and Q3, [0034]).
However, Bowers does not explicitly disclose causing a packet switcher to clone one or more of the data units and forwarding the cloned one or more of the data units to a collector.
Akahane teaches causing a packet switcher to clone one or more of data units belonging to a flow having an indicator that is set and forward the cloned one or more of the data units to a collector (a second statistics control entry defining the statistics control information which indicates to generate a copy of each of the received packets in the packet flow corresponding to the flow identification condition at a specified sampling rate and, when the second statistics control entry is found as the entry corresponding to the flow searching key, the searching unit starts a control operation for generating the copy of the received packet corresponding to the flow identification condition and transferring the copy packet to a specified statistic information collection apparatus, [0026]; The sampling flag 635 indicates that, when the set value is "1", a copy of the received packet should be generated in accordance with the sampling rate 636 and transferred to the collector apparatus C1, [0130]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to transfer a copy packets to a collector in the system/method of Bowers as suggested by Akahane in order for the collector to analyze traffic flows over a network. One would be motivated to combine these teachings because analyzing flow-by-flow statistics would provide information on traffic patterns to better manage network communication resources and quality assurance.
Claim 15 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 6, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
11. Claims 7 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bowers in view of Lamb et al. (US 2013/0235725).
Regarding claim 7, Bowers does not explicitly disclose the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to adjust a Weighted Random Early Detection (“WRED”) curve that is applied to the flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set and is used to determine a probability for discarding data units on enqueue.
Lamb teaches wherein an excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to adjust a Weighted Random Early Detection (“WRED”) curve that is applied to a flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set (the maximum threshold is selected from a plurality of tail rules maintained by packet processor 210. In block 630, packet processor 210 selects a minimum threshold. In one embodiment, the minimum threshold is selected from a plurality of WRED rules maintained by the packet processor 210, [0045]; This tail dropping can continue until packet processor 210 again performs block 610 to measure the global resource usage measured by the block, at which point blocks 620 through 680 are performed again, based on the updated measured global resource usage, [0051]) and is used to determine a probability for discarding data units on enqueue (FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary WRED drop plot 400. Plot 400 contrasts the probability that a chunk of data will be randomly dropped from a queue with some measure of the occupancy or fullness of the queue (e.g., average queue length), [0037]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize dynamic WRED rules in the system/method of Bowers-Beecroft as suggested by Lamb in order to allow for varying drop profiles based on real-time conditions and different data priorities. One would be motivated to combine these teachings because it would provide increased flexibility based on current network situations and packet flows.
Claim 16 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 7, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
12. Claims 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bowers in view of Beecroft et al. (US 2022/0210081).
Regarding claim 8, Bowers does not explicitly disclose the network switching apparatus of Claim 1, wherein the excessive rate policy resolver is further configured to send a transmission pause request to a sender of data units for a flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set.
Beecroft teaches an excessive rate policy resolver configured to send a transmission pause request to a sender of data units for a flow having an excessive rate indicator that is set (Pause is asserted at the point an input buffer is in danger of overflowing and packet drops will occur, [0095]; To slow down data injection from the source, an FGFC logic block on an ingress edge switch (for example, FGFC logic block 434 in edge switch 406 in FIG. 4A) can use a pause-credit hybrid method to throttle incoming data associated a particular flow or group of flows. A pause-based method typically involves a receiving end issuing a pause command to the transmitter end, which in response can stop transmission until further notice, [0096]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to issue a pause command to a flow source in the system/method of Bowers as suggested by Beecroft as a way to manage flows which are overwhelming a system. One would be motivated to combine these teachings because a source pausing transmission of a flow would allow time for the system to catch up and properly process packets of the flow.
Claim 17 comprises limitations similar to those of claim 8, and is therefore rejected in view of the same rationale.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Rochon et al. US 2003/0058793 – packets routed through egress sub-queues based on priority.
Kadambi et al. US 2012/0008502 – sending a message causing data destined for a queue to be halted when congestion is detected.
Matthews US 2014/0237118 – managing an identified elephant flow with a high rate using a dedicated elephant flow queue and routing the packets of the elephant queue to associated egress logic.
Liu et al. US 2016/0173383 – management of flow control between ingress queues and egress queues based on queue congestions states.
Srebro et al. US 2018/0241677 – forwarding flows to a particular egress interface for transmission based on classifying the flows based on a threshold number of packets.
Srivastava et al. US 2021/0021545 – storing a received packet at an ingress port, classifying multiple flows, and assigning an egress queue of a plurality of egress queues each supporting a different priority level.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MADHU WOOLCOCK whose telephone number is (571)270-3629. The examiner can normally be reached Tuesday, Thursday 9-6 ET.
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MADHU WOOLCOCK
Examiner
Art Unit 2451
/MADHU WOOLCOCK/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2451
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