Network Teaming Feature Emulation via Intermediary Driver
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing information handling systems face limitations in multi-vendor teaming, where the team formed by network interface cards (NICs) and local area network (LAN) on motherboards can only support the lowest common level of functionality, leading to reduced feature availability and performance degradation due to unsupported or disabled advanced networking features.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a hardware system integrated teaming assistant (SITA hardware) and software system integrated teaming assistant (SITA software) with a feature checking and enablement system (FCE) that determines and enables advanced networking features across team members, allowing the system to emulate and support features not natively available on all members, thereby enhancing team functionality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If teaming is provided through a software intermediate driver to group physical adapters into a team, then the team can provide load balancing and fault tolerance, but the team can only support the lowest common level of functionality supported by all team members, resulting in advanced networking features being unavailable
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary component (team driver or system) that mediates between the network protocol stack and individual physical adapters. This intermediary captures networking tasks that individual adapters cannot handle and performs them centrally, enabling advanced features like TCP checksum offload, TCP segmentation, and receive side scaling even when not all adapters natively support them.
Solution Approach 2:
The team driver is designed to provide universal support for multiple networking features across diverse adapters. Instead of requiring each adapter to support specific features, the team driver implements a comprehensive feature set that works with all team members, allowing the team to utilize advanced networking capabilities regardless of individual adapter limitations.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multi-vendor teaming is implemented with diverse NICs and LOMs, then hardware compatibility is improved, but performance degradation occurs due to reduced feature availability and unsupported advanced networking features
Solution Approach 1:
The team driver acts as a mediator that bridges compatibility and performance. It translates and manages networking tasks across different vendor adapters, ensuring that advanced features are properly utilized regardless of the adapter's native capabilities, thereby maintaining high networking performance in multi-vendor environments.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts networking parameters and task distribution based on the capabilities of individual adapters and the requirements of networking tasks. The team driver can optimize feature utilization by assigning tasks to appropriate adapters or handling them centrally, thereby maintaining optimal performance across diverse hardware configurations.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the team takes tasks not supported on one of the team members during load balancing or fail over operation, then feature utilization is improved, but the unsupported team member cannot accomplish the task, causing performance degradation
Solution Approach 1:
The team driver serves as a reliable intermediary that ensures task completion reliability. When an adapter cannot handle a specific networking task, the team driver intercepts the task and performs it through alternative means or redirects it to a capable adapter, ensuring that no task fails due to individual adapter limitations.
Solution Approach 2:
The system prepares for potential task failures by having the team driver ready to handle tasks that individual adapters cannot process. This preemptive approach ensures that even if one adapter fails to accomplish a task, the team as a whole can still complete the task through the team driver's intervention, providing a safety cushion against task completion failures.
Data Source
AI summary
A network teaming system includes one or more subsystems to provide a hardware system integrated teaming assistant (SITA hardware), provide a software system integrated teaming assistant (SITA software) operable with the SITA hardware and provide a feature checking and enablement system (FCE), wherein the FCE determines one or more networking features for members of a team coupled together on a network, and wherein the SITA hardware in combination with the SITA software perform a networking feature for a member of the team which does not have the capability to perform the networking feature.