Importance

Loading Importance Indicators...

Abstract

Network traffic management is achieved based on automatically setting up a plurality of virtual networks (VNETs) within a single large virtual LAN. Multicast/broadcast traffic is confined to the VNET of the source, without imposing constraints on layer two addressing within the virtual LAN. VNETs are domains of users of a virtual LAN which include members of logical networks defined at layer three or higher. One method includes transferring a multi-destination packet originating from a particular node in the virtual LAN by tunnelling across a connectionless backbone network to a virtual net server. The virtual net server translates the multi-destination packet to a plurality of tunneled messages identifying nodes authorized to receive multi-destination packets from members of the particular VNET which originated the packet. The tunneled messages are then forwarded from the virtual net server to the authorized nodes. This way, multi-destination packets, such as advertisement or discovery packets, are confined to a single VNET. By confining the multi-destination packets to a single VNET, unicast packets generated within the virtual LAN are then also naturally confined to that VNET.

Loading the Abstract Image...

First Claim