Claims
- 1. A server, comprising:
a network connector; a processor coupled to the network connector, the processor being adapted to process a plurality of different types of network traffic; a peripheral component interface (PCI) bridge coupled to the processor; and a unified driver coupled to the PCI bridge, the unified driver being adapted to provide drivers associated with the plurality of different types of network traffic.
- 2. The server according to claim 1, wherein the network connector comprises an Ethernet connector.
- 3. The server according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of different types of network traffic comprises at least two of common Ethernet traffic, offload traffic, storage traffic and remote direct memory access (RDMA) traffic.
- 4. The server according to claim 1, wherein the processor comprises a single integrated chip.
- 5. The server according to claim 1, wherein the processor comprises a layer 2 network interface card (L2 NIC), a transmission control protocol (TCP) processor and a ULP processor.
- 6. The server according to claim 5, wherein the TCP processor provides layer 3 processing and layer 4 processing.
- 7. The server according to claim 5, wherein the TCP processor is shared by at least two of TCP offload traffic, Internet small computer system interface (iSCSI) traffic and RDMA traffic.
- 8. The server according to claim 5, wherein the ULP processor provides iSCSI processing.
- 9. The server according to claim 5, wherein the ULP processor provides RDMA processing.
- 10. The server according to claim 1, further comprising:
a server management agent coupled to the processor.
- 11. The server according to claim 1, wherein the server management agent is coupled to a keyboard and/or video and/or mouse service.
- 12. The server according to claim 1, further comprising:
a plurality of services coupled to the unified driver.
- 13. The server according to claim 12, wherein the plurality of services comprises at least two of a socket service, a SCSI miniport service, an RDMA service and a keyboard and/or video and/or mouse service.
- 14. The server according to claim 1,
wherein the unified driver is coupled to a software TCP processor and to a socket service switch, wherein the software TCP processor is coupled to the socket service switch, and wherein the socket service switch is coupled to a socket service.
- 15. The server according to claim 1, wherein the processor or the PCI bridge determines which of the different types of network traffic accesses a particular service provided by the server.
- 16. The server according to claim 15, wherein the particular service comprises at least one of a socket service, a SCSI miniport service, an RDMA service and a keyboard and/or video and/or mouse service.
- 17. The server according to claim 1, wherein the processor, the PCI bridge or the unified driver provides a unified data and control path.
- 18. A method for network interfacing, comprising:
(a) handling a plurality of different types of network traffic via a layer 2 (L2) connector; (b) processing the different types of network traffic in a single chip; and (c) determining which of the different types of network traffic accesses software services via a single data path.
- 19. The method according to claim 18, wherein the plurality of different types of network traffic comprises at least two of common Ethernet traffic, offload traffic, storage traffic, interprocess communication (IPC) traffic and management traffic.
- 20. The method according to claim 18, wherein the L2 connector is a single L2 connector.
- 21. The method according to claim 18, wherein (c) comprises employing time division multiplexing to determine which of the different types of network traffic access the software services via the single data path.
- 22. The method according to claim 18, wherein (c) comprises dynamically allocating fixed resources between among the different types of network traffic.
- 23. The method according to claim 18, further comprising:
(a) providing drivers associated with the plurality of different types of network traffic via a unified driver.
- 24. A method for network interfacing, comprising:
(a) handling a plurality of different types of network traffic via a single Ethernet connector; (b) processing the plurality of different types of network traffic using a layer 2 (L2) processor, a layer 3 (L3) processor, a layer 4 (L4) processor and an upper layer protocol (ULP) processor; and (c) providing a unified data and control path.
- 25. The method according to claim 24, wherein the L2 processor comprises a single L2 network interface card (NIC).
- 26. The method according to claim 24, wherein the L3 processor and the L4 processor are combined into a single TCP processor.
- 27. The method according to claim 24, wherein the ULP processor comprises at least one of an Internet small computer system interface (iSCSI) processor and a remote direct memory access (RDMA) processor.
- 28. The method according to claim 24, further comprising:
(a) providing drivers associated with the plurality of different types of network traffic via a single unified driver.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS/INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE
[0001] This application makes reference to, claims priority to and claims benefit from U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/477,279, entitled “System and Method for Network Interfacing in a Multiple Network Environment” and filed on Jun. 10, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/478,106, entitled “System and Method for Network Interfacing” and filed on Jun. 11, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/408,617, entitled “System and Method for TCP/IP Offload” and filed on Sep. 6, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/407,165, entitled “System and Method for TCP Offload” and filed on Aug. 30, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/456,265, entitled “System and Method for TCP Offload” and filed on Mar. 30, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/456,260, entitled “System and Method for Handling Out-of-Order Frames” and filed on Mar. 20, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/410,022, entitled “System and Method for TCP Offloading and Uploading” and filed on Sep. 11, 2002; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/298,817, entitled “System and Method for TCP Offloading and Uploading” and filed on Nov. 18, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/411,294, entitled “System and Method for Handling Partially Processed Frames” and filed on Sep. 17, 2002; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/302,474, entitled “System and Method for Handling Frames in Multiple Stack Environments” and filed on Nov. 21, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/408,207, entitled “System and Method for Fault Tolerant TCP Offload” and filed on Sep. 4, 2002; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/337,029, entitled “System and Method for Fault Tolerant TCP Offload” and filed on Jan. 6, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/405,539, entitled “Remote Direct Memory Access over TCP/IP using Generic Buffers for Non-Posting TCP” and filed on Aug. 23, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/398,663, entitled “Dual TCP/IP Stacks Connection Management for Winsock Direct (WSD)” and filed on Jul. 26, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/434,503, entitled “System and Method for Handling Multiple Stack Environments” and filed on Dec. 18, 2002; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/336,983, entitled “System and Method for Handling Multiple Stack Environments” and filed on Jan. 6, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/403,817, entitled “One Shot RDMA Having Only a 2 Bit State” and filed on Aug. 14, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/404,709, entitled “Optimizing RDMA for Storage Applications” and filed on Aug. 19, 2002; U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 60/419,354, entitled “System and Method for Statistical Provisioning” and filed on Oct. 18, 2002; U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 60/420,901, entitled “System and Method for Statistical Provisioning” and filed on Oct. 24, 2002; U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 60/439,951, entitled “System and Method for Statistical Provisioning” and filed on Jan. 14, 2003; U.S. Patent Application Serial No. 60/442,360, entitled “System and Method for Statistical Provisioning” and filed on Jan. 24, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/425,959, entitled “Joint Memory Management for User Space and Storage” and filed on Nov. 12, 2002; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/456,266, entitled “Self-Describing Transport Protocol Segments” and filed on Mar. 20, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/437,887, entitled “Header Alignment and Complete PDU” and filed on Jan. 2, 2003; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/456,322, entitled “System and Method for Handling Transport Protocol Segments” and filed on Mar. 20, 2003; and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/230,643, entitled “System and Method for Identifying Upper Layer Protocol Message Boundaries” and filed on Aug. 29, 2002.
[0002] The above-referenced U.S. patent applications are hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Provisional Applications (18)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
|
60477279 |
Jun 2003 |
US |
|
60478106 |
Jun 2003 |
US |
|
60408617 |
Sep 2002 |
US |
|
60407165 |
Aug 2002 |
US |
|
60456265 |
Mar 2003 |
US |
|
60456260 |
Mar 2003 |
US |
|
60410022 |
Sep 2002 |
US |
|
60411294 |
Sep 2002 |
US |
|
60408207 |
Sep 2002 |
US |
|
60434503 |
Dec 2002 |
US |
|
60419354 |
Oct 2002 |
US |
|
60420901 |
Oct 2002 |
US |
|
60439951 |
Jan 2003 |
US |
|
60442360 |
Jan 2003 |
US |
|
60425959 |
Nov 2002 |
US |
|
60456266 |
Mar 2003 |
US |
|
60437887 |
Jan 2003 |
US |
|
60456322 |
Mar 2003 |
US |