ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,395,419, issued on Aug. 19, was assigned to Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. (Pullman, Wash.).

"Programmable network detection of network loops" was invented by Tristan Lloyd Mullis (Pullman, Wash.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A device may include a loop detection subsystem to place a network flow on a first switch to forward any received open flow discovery protocol (OFDP) packets to the software-defined network (SDN) controller. The device may cause the first switch to egress a query OFDP packet out of a first port of the first switch. The device may detect that the first port on the first switch is attached to a network loop...