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
This office action is in response to the application filed on March 9, 2025.
Claims 1-20 are pending. Claims 1-20 represent NETWORK DEVICE USING NETWORK PROCESSING UNIT AND HARDWARE ACCELERATION CIRCUIT TO MEET SPEED TEST REQUIREMENTS OF HIGH-SPEED NETWORK AND ASSOCIATED NETWORK SPEED TEST METHOD.
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.
2. Claims 1-2, 4-6, 10-12, 14-16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over BHATNAGAR et al. U.S. 20250233820 (referred to hereafter as Bhat) in view of Kodama et al. U.S. 7,4607473.
Bhat teaches the invention substantially including System and Method for Enabling Speed Test of Internet Connection Using Mobile Application (see abstract).
As to claim 1, Bhat teaches a network device comprising:
a storage device (item 610), arranged to store a program code (figure 6; paragraph 132);
a processor (item 670), arranged to load and execute the program code figure 6; paragraph 132) to perform following operation:
during a network speed test period, calculating at least one transmission parameter (paragraph 18, Bhat discloses speed test and a calculation module configured to measure a time taken for transfer of data packets…).
Bhat teaches substantial features of the claimed invention including “transmission parameter to self-generate a plurality of packets and send the plurality of packets to another network device for network speed test (paragraphs 71, 112)” but fails to explicitly teach a hardware acceleration circuit, arranged to provide a function of hardware-accelerated packet processing.
However, Kodama teaches Network Receive Interface for High Bandwidth
Hardware-Accelerated Packet Processing. Kodama teaches a hardware acceleration circuit, arranged to provide a function of hardware-accelerated packet processing (abstract).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the method of Bhat to include the teaching of “a hardware-accelerated packet processing module” of Kodama with the motivation being to allow accelerating network packet processing for devices configured to process network traffic at relatively high data rates (abstract)
As to claim 2, Bhat and Kodama teach the network device of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of packets is a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packet (column 3, lines 50-60 of Kodama).
As to claim 4, Bhat and Kodama teach the network device of claim 1, wherein the at least one transmission parameter comprises a sending rate (column 16, lines 13-17, Kodama discloses processing at a high rate of speed such that the iSNP 120).
As to claim 5, Bhat and Kodama teach the network device of claim 4, wherein the hardware acceleration circuit comprises: a rate limiter circuit, arranged to restrict that the plurality of packets are sent to the another network device at the sending rate (column 3, line 62 to column 4, line 22 of Kodama).
As to claim 6, Bhat and Kodama teach the network device of claim 1, wherein the at least one transmission parameter comprises a data amount (paragraph 71 of Bhat).
As to claim 10, Bhat and Kodama teach the network device of claim 1, wherein the network device is an optical network unit (ONU) (paragraph 69 of Bhat).
3. Claims 3 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over BHATNAGAR et al. U.S. 20250233820 (referred to hereafter as Bhat) in view of Kodama et al. U.S. 7,4607473, further in view of Kerpez et al. U.S. 20220247651.
As to claim 3, Bhat and Kodama teach the network device of claim 2.
Bhat and Kodama fail to explicitly teach the network speed test employs a TR-471 speed test protocol (UDP-based speed test protocol).
However, Kerpez teaches System and Method for Network and Computations Performance Probing for Edge Computing. Kerpez teaches the network speed test employs a TR-471 speed test protocol (paragraph 64).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the method of Bhat and Kodama to include the teaching of “a User-Datagram Protocol (UDP) speed test, as defined in Broadband Forum TR-471, Maximum IP-Layer Capacity Metric, Related Metrics, and Measurements, 2020 to determine network speed” of Kodama with the motivation being to allow Edge probing can be used to assess performance of and assign converged networking and computing infrastructure to applications and devices (abstract).
Claims 11-16 and 20 did not teach anything different from the above rejected claims, therefore are rejected similarly.
Allowable Subject Matter
4. Claims 7-9 and 17-19 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
5. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EL HADJI SALL whose telephone number is (571)272-4010. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00-8:30 (flexible).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ario Etienne can be reached at 5712724001. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/EL HADJI M SALL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2457
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