DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
2. 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. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis 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.
Status of Claims
1. The following is a non-final office action in response to the applicant’s submission received on 09/27/2024.
2. Claims 1 – 8 and 10 - 21 are currently pending and have been examined.
Foreign Priority/Domestic benefit
There is no claim to foreign priority according 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed under 35 U.S.C. §119 for Chinese patent application No. 202210349326.X, field on April 1, 20222.
Domestic benefit is claimed with regards to National Stage of International Application No. PCT/CN2023/085243 filed on March 30, 2023.
Oath/Declaration
1. The applicant’s oath/declaration filed on 09/27/2024 has been reviewed by the examiner and is found to conform to the requirements prescribed in 37 C.F.R. 1.63.
Information Disclosure Statement
1. The information disclosure statements filed on 09/27/2024 is in compliance with the provision of 37 CFR 1.97, 1.98 and MPEP § 609. It has been placed in the application file and the information referred to therein has been considered as to the merits.
Drawings
1. The applicant’s drawings submitted on 09/27/2024 are acceptable for examination purposes.
Claim objection(s)
1. Regarding claims 17 – 21, it is recommended to change the term “The storage medium” to “The non-transitory computer readable storage medium” as recited in independent claims 10.
Claim interpretation
1. Limitations appearing in the specification but not recited in the claim should not be read into the claim. E-Pass Techs., Inc. v. 3Com Corp., 343 F.3d 1364, 1369, 67 USPQ2d 1947, 1950 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (claims must be interpreted "in view of the specification" without importing limitations from the specification into the claims unnecessarily) [MPEP 2106 Sec I, C]. “Though understanding the claim language may be aided by explanations contained in the written description, it is important not to import into a claim limitations that are not part of the claim. For example, a particular embodiment appearing in the written description may not be read into a claim when the claim language is broader than the embodiment.” Superguide Corp. v. DirecTV Enterprises, Inc., 358 F.3d 870, 875, 69 USPQ2d 1865, 1868 (Fed. Cir. 2004). [MPEP 2111.01 Sec II]. Thus, the Examiner interprets Applicant’s claims "in view of the specification" and does not “import into a claim limitations that are not part of the claim”.
2. When multiple limitations are connected with “OR”, one of the limitations does not have any patentable weight since both of the limitations are optional.
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.
1. Claim(s) 1 - 2, 6, 10, 13 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ren et al. (CN 110677358, a translated copy is included and is used in the rejection below) in view of Zhen et al. (A SmartNIC-based Load Balancing and Auto Scaling Framework for Middlebox Edge Server, IEEE, 2021).
Regarding claim 1, Ren discloses: A method for transmitting a packet, [the method is seen in the description of figure 3 on page 6/16] comprising:
determining, from a plurality of physical ports [see the last paragraph on page 7/16]
determining a target queue corresponding to the target port based on mapping relationships between the plurality of physical ports and a plurality of queues, wherein one or more queues of the plurality of queues correspond to one physical port of the plurality of physical ports, and the plurality of queues are used to cache to-be-transmitted packets; [see the last paragraph on page 7/16 in view of Figure2 description on page 6/16 (lines 6 – 16) ]
transmitting a packet in the target queue through the target port. [see the last paragraph of page 6/16 see also step S103 on page 8/16].
Ren discloses every aspect of claim 1, except that the method above is being performed on a single physical network interface card, such difference is seen in the secondary reference of Zhen. Figure 2 on the third page Zhen depicts a single smart NIC (SmartNIC-based stateful load balancer), that possesses ports 1- port n. Looking at section A, right column of page 3, recites the following excerpt: “…the stateful load balancer (NIC (network interface card)) possesses an algorithm to dynamically assign weights to ports in order to balance the incoming load across them … so a port which had heavy load in the last period will be assigned a relatively small weight for the next period so that it can release some processing pressure. In the same way,those ports which receive less packets in the current period will be assigned larger weights and are more likely to receive new flows in the next round. We let SmartLB dynamically update the weights every second in our evaluation. Every time this weight update happens, we reset all the counters to make sure each round is a fresh iteration.”
In other words, the salient feature of this application is on a single network interface card of selecting the outgoing physical port first, based on load conditions, and then selecting the queue mapped to that port. By preferring a light-loaded port, the system shifts packet transmission toward ports with available capacity and away from congested ports. This concept is taught in the reference of Zhen pertaining to a single network interface card, however, the concept of having different queues assigned to the different ports and selecting a target queue is being taught by Ren. The combination of the two references would have render the applicant’s claim invention to be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, since this situation entails applying a known technique to a known device to yield predictable results.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Ren’s system in view of Zhen. The motivation for making the above modification would have been to increase flow-level fairness, reduces tail latency, and support auto scaling feature for high performance network functions. [see Abstract on the first page of Zhen].
Claims 6 and 10 are also rejected by the applied references for similar reasons as claim 11.
Claim 2, Ren further discloses: The method according to claim 1, wherein the preset condition comprises: a number of accumulated packets is less than a preset threshold. [see the last paragraph on page 7; At the same time the reference of Zhen discloses on the 4th page, left column, a heavy load on a given port is assign a small weight, hence implying the accumulation of packets at this port ].
Claims 13 and 17 are also rejected by the applied references for similar reasons as claim 2.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3 – 5, 7 – 8, 11 – 12, 14 – 16 and 18 – 21 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MAHARISHI V KHIRODHAR whose telephone number is (571)270-7909. The examiner can normally be reached 6:00 AM - 3:00 PM.
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MAHARISHI V. KHIRODHAR
Examiner
Art Unit 2463
/MAHARISHI V KHIRODHAR/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2463
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