An intelligent network interface card (INIC) or communication processing device (CPD) works with a host computer for data communication. The device provides a fast-path that avoids protocol processing for most messages, greatly accelerating data transfer and offloading time-intensive processing tasks from the host CPU. The host retains a fallback processing capability for messages that do not fit fast-path criteria, with the device providing assistance such as validation even for slow-path messages, and messages being selected for either fast-path or slow-path processing. A context for a connection is defined that allows the device to move data, free of headers, directly to or from a destination or source in the host. The context can be passed back to the host for message processing by the host. The device contains specialized hardware circuits that are much faster at their specific tasks than a general purpose CPU. A preferred embodiment includes a trio of pipelined processors devoted to transmit, receive and utility processing, providing full duplex communication for four Fast Ethernet nodes.

TCP/IP offload network interface device

A system for protocol processing in a computer network has an intelligent network interface card (INIC) or communication processing device (CPD) associated with a host computer. The INIC provides a fast-path that avoids protocol processing for most large multi-packet messages, greatly accelerating data communication. The INIC also assists the host for those message packets that are chosen for processing by host software layers. A communication control block for a message is defined that allows DMA controllers of the INIC to move data, free of headers, directly to or from a destination or source in the host. The context is stored in the INIC as a communication control block (CCB) that can be passed back to the host for message processing by the host. The INIC contains specialized hardware circuits that are much faster at their specific tasks than a general purpose CPU. A preferred embodiment includes a trio of pipelined processors with separate processors devoted to transmit, receive and management processing, with full duplex communication for four fast Ethernet nodes.

Fast-path apparatus for receiving data corresponding to a TCP connection

A monitor for and a method of examining packets passing through a connection point on a computer network. Each packets conforms to one or more protocols. The method includes receiving a packet from a packet acquisition device and performing one or more parsing/extraction operations on the packet to create a parser record comprising a function of selected portions of the packet. The parsing/extraction operations depend on one or more of the protocols to which the packet conforms. The method further includes looking up a flow-entry database containing flow-entries for previously encountered conversational flows. The lookup uses the selected packet portions and determining if the packet is of an existing flow. If the packet is of an existing flow, the method classifies the packet as belonging to the found existing flow, and if the packet is of a new flow, the method stores a new flow-entry for the new flow in the flow-entry database, including identifying information for future packets to be identified with the new flow-entry. For the packet of an existing flow, the method updates the flow-entry of the existing flow. Such updating may include storing one or more statistical measures. Any stage of a flow, state is maintained, and the method performs any state processing for an identified state to further the process of identifying the flow. The method thus examines each and every packet passing through the connection point in real time until the application program associated with the conversational flow is determined.

Method and apparatus for monitoring traffic in a network

A system and method for facilitating packet transformation of multi-protocol, multi-flow, streaming data. Packet portions subject to change are temporarily stored, and acted upon through processing of protocol-dependent instructions, resulting in a protocol-dependent modification of the temporarily stored packet information. Validity tags are associated with different segments of the temporarily-stored packet, where the state of each tag determines whether its corresponding packet segment will form part of the resulting modified packet. Only those packet segments identified as being part of the resulting modified packet are reassembled prior to dispatch of the packet.

System and method for providing transformation of multi-protocol packets in a data stream

An interface device is connected to a host by an I/O bus and provides hardware and processing mechanisms for accelerating data transfers between a network and a storage unit, while controlling the data transfers by the host. The interface device includes hardware circuitry for processing network packet headers, and can use a dedicated fast-path for data transfer between the network and the storage unit, the fast-path set up by the host. The host CPU and protocol stack avoids protocol processing for data transfer over the fast-path, freeing host bus bandwidth, and the data need not cross the I/O bus, freeing I/O bus bandwidth. The storage unit may include RAID or other multiple drive configurations and may be connected to the INIC by a parallel channel such as SCSI or by a serial channel such as Ethernet or Fibre Channel. The interface device contains a file cache that stores data transferred between the network and storage unit, with organization of data in the interface device file cache controlled by a file system on the host. Additional interface devices may be connected to the host via the I/O bus, with each additional interface device having a file cache controlled by the host file system, and providing additional network connections and/or being connected to additional storage units.

Intelligent network storage interface system

A network interface receives a packet from a network and transfers it to a host computer system. A header portion of the packet is parsed by a parser module to determine if the packet conforms to a predetermined protocol. A flow database is maintained by a flow database manager to reflect the creation, termination and activity of communication flows. A re-assembly engine re-assembles data portions of multiple packets from a single communication flow. Header portions of re-assembled packets are stored in a header buffer. When multiple packets in one flow are transferred to the host, a packet batching module enables their header portions to be processed collectively rather than being interspersed with other packets. A packet queue stores packets awaiting transfer to the host and a control queue stores information concerning the waiting packets. If the packet queue becomes saturated with packets, a random packet may be discarded.

A high performance network interface

A system and method are provided for transferring a packet received from a network to a host computer. A flow key is generated to identify a communication flow that comprises the packet. A code is generated to indicate how the packet should be transferred to host memory. Based on the code, a transfer engine stores the packet in one or more host buffers. If the packet conforms to a predetermined protocol, its data is added to a re-assembly buffer with data from other packets in the same flow and its header portion is stored in a header buffer. Otherwise, the packet is stored in the header buffer if it is smaller than a predetermined threshold or, if larger than the threshold, it is stored in another buffer. After a packet is stored, the transfer engine configures a descriptor with information concerning the packet and releases the descriptor to the host.

Method and apparatus for data re-assembly with a high performance network interface

A network interface is polled by a process operating on a host computer system. Each time the network interface is polled the process determines whether any packets have been transferred to the host. If so, they are processed. Interrupts that would normally be issued from the network interface in response to the transfer of packets are suppressed or postponed during the polling mode of operation. If, however, a predetermined period of time has elapsed or a predetermined number of packets have been transferred since a previous poll or a previous interrupt, then an interrupt may be generated.

Method and apparatus for indicating an interrupt in a network interface

A system and method are provided for randomly discarding a packet received at a high performance network interface if the rate of packet transfers cannot keep pace with the rate of packet arrivals. A selected packet may be dropped as it arrives at a packet queue, or a packet already in the queue may be discarded. The queue has multiple defined regions, any of which may overlap or share a common boundary. A probability indicator is associated with a region to specify the probability of a packet being discarded when the level of traffic in the queue is within the region. Probability indicators may differ from region to region so that the probability of discarding a packet fluctuates as the level of traffic stored in the queue changes. Information gleaned from a packet may be applied to prevent certain types of packets from being dropped.

Method and apparatus for early random discard of packets

A cross stack port aggregation method and system associates a destination index with a received packet when it is provided to devices in the stack. Each device utilizes the destination index to access a descriptor identifying ports in the device included in the port aggregation group. An index generated from packet address data is used to select a bit in a group mask unique to each port.

Linda Cheng

Papers

A high performance network interface

Method and apparatus for data re-assembly with a high performance network interface

Method and apparatus for indicating an interrupt in a network interface

Method and apparatus for early random discard of packets

Defining link aggregation across a stack