Appeal 2007-0375
Application 09/886,186
OPINION
In response to the § 103(a) rejection of the claims over Acharya and
Pettey, Appellants contend that the references do not describe passing data
from the host channel adapter directly to an Internet Protocol router or the
router being connected directly to the host channel adapter, as required by
representative claim 1.
The rejection relies on Acharya for the teaching. Acharya describes a
“conventional” network having the InfiniBand™ Architecture Specification
(Fig. 1). Host channel adapters (HCAs) 12 provide computing node 11a
with an interface connection to the network 10. Further, target channel
adapters (TCAs) 14 provide the destination target nodes 11b and 11c with an
interface connection to the network. Acharya col. 1, l. 12 - col. 2, l. 9.
Acharya recognizes the problem that when a data packet is sent from a
TCP/IP network to an InfiniBand™ network, the IP priorities of the packet
are not retained. Col. 2, ll. 10-14.
In Acharya’s system, router 20 serves as an interface between the IP
and the InfiniBand™ network domain, as depicted in Figure 4. Router 20
contains software for generating a mapping table for bridging between
domains. Col. 7, l. 49 - col. 8, l. 21; Fig. 3.
Appellants argue, however, that Acharya’s system does not teach
passing data directly from a host channel adapter to an Internet Protocol (IP)
router. According to Appellants, the router of Acharya includes the host
channel adapter within the router itself. As such, data cannot be passed from
the host channel adapter to the router because the host channel adapter is
part of the router, in Appellants’ view.
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Last modified: September 9, 2013