Flow control visibility
AssigneeBarefoot Networks, Inc.
InventorsRemy Chang, Anurag Agrawal, Yi Li, Michael Feng, Yan Wang
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Some embodiments provide a method for a traffic management circuit of a data plane forwarding circuit. The traffic management circuit receives data messages from a set of ingress pipelines and provides the data messages to a set of egress pipelines. The method identifies a flow control event. The method provides metadata regarding the flow control event to a message generation circuit of the data plane forwarding circuit via a bus between the traffic management circuit and the message generation circuit.
Claims19
A method comprising:
- at a traffic management circuit of a network forwarding integrated circuit (IC), identifying a flow control event, wherein the traffic management circuit receives data messages from a set of ingress pipelines and provides the data messages to a set of egress pipelines;
- providing metadata regarding the flow control event to a message generation circuit of the network forwarding IC via a connection between the traffic management circuit and the message generation circuit, wherein the metadata comprises (i) indication whether the flow control event corresponds to receipt of a flow control message at the network forwarding IC or generation of a flow control message at the network forwarding IC and (ii) a port identifier that specifies the port at which a flow control message was received or through which a flow control message was sent;
- the message generation circuit generating a data message, the data message including (i) a data message header and (ii) metadata for at least one flow control event;
- and
- transmitting the generated data message to a remote server for analysis.
A data plane circuit of a network forwarding element for forwarding data messages within a network, the data plane circuit comprising:
- a set of ingress pipelines;
- a set of egress pipelines;
- a message generation circuit;
- and
- a traffic management circuit to receive data messages from the set of ingress pipelines and to provide the data messages to the set of egress pipelines, wherein the traffic management circuit (i) is to identify a flow control event and (ii) is to provide metadata regarding the flow control event to the message generation circuit via a connection, wherein the metadata comprises:
- (a) indication whether the flow control event corresponds to receipt of a flow control message at the network forwarding element or generation of a flow control message at the network forwarding element and (b) a port identifier that specifies the port at which a flow control message was received or through which a flow control message was sent;
- the message generation circuit to generate a data message for transmission to a remote monitoring system, the data message including (i) a data message header and (n) metadata for at east one flow control event;
- and
- an egress pipeline of the set of egress pipelines to cause transmission of the data message to the remote monitoring system.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.