Centralized control and management planes for different independent switching domains

摘要

A network includes a first switching domain having a distributed fabric comprised of interconnected standalone switches. The standalone switches communicate with each other in accordance with a packet-based distributed fabric protocol. A second switching domain has a plurality of cell-based switches in communication with a cell-based switch fabric. The cell-based switches communicate with each other through the cell-based switch fabric in accordance with a cell-based distributed fabric protocol. One of the cell-based switches is coupled by a communication link to one of the standalone switches of the first switching domain. The second switching domain includes a server device coupled to one of the cell-based switches. The server device is configured with logic to process control packets for the standalone switches in accordance with the packet-based distributed fabric protocol and control packets for the cell-based switches in accordance with a protocol that is different from the packet-based distributed fabric protocol.

主权项

1. A switching domain comprising:
a cell-based switch fabric; a plurality of cell-based switches coupled to the cell-based switch fabric, each cell-based switch communicating with each other cell-based switch through the cell-based switch fabric in accordance with a cell-based distributed fabric protocol; and a server device coupled to one of the cell-based switches, the server device comprising: memory storing program code for providing control plane functionality for a switching domain comprised of a plurality of interconnected standalone packet-based switches that communicate with each other in accordance with a packet-based distributed fabric protocol and program code for providing control plane functionality for the plurality of cell-based switches that communicate with each other through the cell-based switch fabric in accordance with the cell-based distributed fabric protocol; and a processor executing the program code stored in the memory to process control packets for the switching domain comprised of the plurality of interconnected standalone switches in accordance with the packet-based distributed fabric protocol and control packets for the plurality of cell-based switches in accordance with a protocol different from the packet-based distributed fabric protocol.