US 11,895,020 B1
Virtualized cell site routers with layer 2 forwarding
Muhammad Qasim Arham, Frisco, TX (US); Vinod Nair, San Jose, CA (US); Vinay K Nallamothu, Sunnyvale, CA (US); Kiran K N, Bangalore (IN); Shelesh Bansal, Bangalore (IN); Shailender Sharma, Bangalore (IN); and Rakesh Kumar Reddy Varimalla, Bengaluru (IN)
Assigned to Juniper Networks, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US)
Filed by Juniper Networks, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US)
Filed on Sep. 30, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/937,288.
Int. Cl. H04L 45/42 (2022.01); H04L 45/00 (2022.01); H04L 45/28 (2022.01)
CPC H04L 45/42 (2013.01) [H04L 45/28 (2013.01); H04L 45/566 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A cell site for a 5G radio access network, the cell site comprising:
a plurality of Distributed Unit (DU) servers each comprising a virtualized cell site router (vCSR) having a containerized routing protocol process and a forwarding plane configured to perform Layer 2 (L2) switching,
wherein a first DU server of the plurality of DU servers is connected by a first physical link to a second DU server of the plurality of DU servers and is connected by a second physical link to an L2 switch,
wherein the forwarding plane of the vCSR of the first DU server is configured with interfaces for the first physical link and the second physical link, the interfaces configured with an L2 bridge domain, and
wherein the forwarding plane of the vCSR of the first DU server is configured to switch an L2 packet, on the L2 bridge domain, between the second DU server and the L2 switch.