David Scott Mccowan

US Patent:

6067573, May 23, 2000

Filed:

Sep 10, 1997

Appl. No.:

8/926539

Inventors:

Ulrica Tam - Belmont CA
Steven H. Berl - Piedmont CA
Leo Pereira - Fremont CA
Dario Calia - San Jose CA
John David Billings - Chapel Hill NC
David Scott McCowan - Raleigh NC

Assignee:

Cisco Technology, Inc. - San Jose CA

International Classification:

G06F 1338
G06F 1517

US Classification:

709242

Abstract:

A mechanism limits the flow of topology information to only those nodes of a computer network that require the information. The mechanism comprises a filter having a plurality of conditions that are evaluated by a node of the network prior to forwarding the topology information to another node. Specifically, the conditions are evaluated with respect to lists of nodes that are defined according to the configuration of the network. By applying the filtering conditions to the defined lists, each node may selectively propagate the topology information throughout the network, thereby substantially reducing the amount of information flowing over the network.