High availability/high density system and method

Abstract

A system and method for providing high availability for telecommunications and data communications by implementing a network bus architecture at a card level. The network bus architecture, which may be a combination of hardware, software, and APIs, replaces the conventional midplane/backplane as the system bus for PCI purposes. The system provides physical redundancy to the system by connecting ports of the various system cards using dual/redundant ethernet switches. Further, since the system cards are connected through network connections, failure of any component is interpreted and addressed as a network failure instead of as a hardware failure.

1 . A high availability telecom/datacom architecture comprising: 
 dual/redundant ethernet switches;    a plurality of I/O cards connected to the dual/redundant ethernet switches; and    at least two CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the ethernet switches.    
   
   
       2 . The architecture of  claim 1  further comprising: 
 a system monitor and control module coupled to the at least two CPUs and the plurality of I/O cards via the ethernet switches.    
   
   
       3 . A high availability telecom/datacom architecture comprising: 
 dual/redundant network links;    a plurality of I/O cards connected to the dual/redundant network links; and    a system controller coupled to the plurality of I/O cards via the dual/redundant network links.    
   
   
       4 . The architecture of  claim 3  wherein the system controller comprises multiple CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the dual/redundant network links.  
   
   
       5 . The architecture of  claim 3  wherein the dual/redundant network links are implemented using ethernet switches.  
   
   
       6 . The architecture of  claim 4  wherein the dual/redundant network links are implemented using ethernet switches.  
   
   
       7 . The architecture of  claim 3  further comprising: 
 a system monitor and control module coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards via the network links.    
   
   
       8 . The architecture of  claim 5  further comprising: 
 a system monitor and control module coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards via the network links.    
   
   
       9 . A network bus architecture for providing high availability to telecom/datacom systems comprising: 
 dual/redundant network links;    a plurality of I/O cards connected to the dual/redundant network links; and,    a system controller coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the dual/redundant network links.    
   
   
       10 . The network bus architecture of  claim 9  wherein the network links are implemented using ethernet switches.  
   
   
       11 . The architecture of  claim 10  wherein the system controller comprises multiple CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the ethernet switches.  
   
   
       12 . The architecture of  claim 9  wherein the system controller comprises multiple CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the network links.  
   
   
       13 . The architecture of  claim 9  further comprising: 
 a system monitor and control node coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards.    
   
   
       14 . The architecture of  claim 12  further comprising: 
 a system monitor and control node coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards.    
   
   
       15 . The architecture of  claim 9  further comprising software and APIs.