Hierarchical time stamping
AssigneeArista Networks, Inc.
InventorsAnshul Sadana, Prasanna Parthasarathy, Adam James Sweeney
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Abstract
Various embodiments are described herein, which provide a network element comprising a network port to receive production network data that is used for purposes other than testing the performance of a network, a data plane coupled to the network port, the data plane including a timing module to append a time stamp to a set of one or more time stamps included within the production network data, and a control plane coupled to the data plane, the control plane including a latency analyzer to analyze the set of one or more time stamps included within the production network data.
Claims24
A network element comprising:
- a network physical port to receive, via a production network, production network data that is used for purposes other than testing the performance of a network, wherein the production network data includes a plurality of units of production network data having different protocols and traveling over a plurality of different paths to the network element;
- a data plane coupled to the network port, the data plane including a timing module to append a time stamp to a plurality of time stamps included within each unit of the production network data;
- and
- a control plane coupled to the data plane, the control plane implemented with circuitry and including a latency analyzer to determine a latency for each unit of production network data based on at least the plurality of time stamps and a path analyzer to determine a path corresponding to the latency for each unit of production network data based on a set of host identifiers included with the plurality of time stamps.
A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing instructions to cause one or more processing units of a network element to perform operations comprising:
- receiving production network data at a network port of the network element, wherein the production network data is used for purposes other than testing the performance of a network and the production network data includes a plurality of units of production network data having different protocols and traveling over a plurality of different paths to the network element;
- appending a time stamp to a plurality of hierarchical time stamps within each unit of the production network data;
- and
- analyzing the plurality of hierarchical time stamps included within the production network data using control plane logic of the network element to determine a latency for each unit of production network data and to determine a path corresponding to the latency for each unit of the production network data based on a set of host identifiers included with the plurality of time stamps.
A network system comprising:
- a set of network elements to interconnect a set of host devices on a network, each network element in the set of network elements to append a time stamp to each received unit of production network data received at the network element, the time stamp appended in a hierarchical manner to any existing set of timestamps on the unit of production network data, wherein the production network data includes a plurality of units of production network data having different protocols and traveling over a plurality of different paths to the network element;
- and
- a network management device, coupled to the set of network elements through a physical port of the network management device via the network, having a network management module to monitor and configure the set of network elements, the network management module including a latency data aggregator that determines latencies for multiple paths in the network between different pairs of ingress, egress network elements selected from the set of network elements.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.