Serial clustering

摘要

Serial clustering uses two or more network devices connected in series via a local and/or wide-area network to provide additional capacity when network traffic exceeds the processing capabilities of a single network device. When a first network device reaches its capacity limit, any excess network traffic beyond that limit is passed through the first network device unchanged. A network device connected in series with the first network device intercepts and will process the excess network traffic provided that it has sufficient processing capacity. Additional network devices can process remaining network traffic in a similar manner until all of the excess network traffic has been processed or until there are no more additional network devices. Network devices may use rules to determine how to handle network traffic. Rules may be based on the attributes of received network packets, attributes of the network device, or attributes of the network.

主权项

1. A device adapted to process network traffic in conjunction with a plurality of additional devices, the device comprising:
a processor; and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that are executable by the processor, the instructions comprising:
instructions to receive a network packet;instructions to determine if the device has sufficient processing capacity to process network traffic associated with the network packet;instructions to identify, from among a plurality of rules, at least one matching rule matching the network packet, wherein the at least one matching rule is identified separately from at least one nonmatching rule not matching the network packet;instructions to evaluate the network packet using the at least one identified matching rule to determine whether to accept or pass-through the network packet, wherein at least one nonmatching rule is skipped in evaluating the network packet and the at least one identified matching rule is evaluated in an order specified by a rule list;instructions to forward the network packet to a selected additional device in response to a determination that the device does not have sufficient processing capacity to process the associated network traffic;instructions to forward the network packet to the selected additional device in response to the evaluation of the at least one identified matching rule determining to pass-through the network packet; andinstructions to accept the network packet in response to a determination that the device does have sufficient processing capacity to process the associated network traffic and in response to the evaluation of the at least one identified matching rule determining to accept the network packet;wherein the device is connected to the selected additional device in a serial cluster, andwherein the devices in the serial cluster are configured to not respond to auto-discovery probe messages from each other.