Loop prevention
AssigneeCisco Technology, Inc.
InventorSaravanan Arunachalam
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
This disclosure describes techniques for preventing message loops in communications among network devices. The techniques include preventing messages from being returned to a sending node and preventing messages from being sent more than once to any particular node. Such message loops may reverberate among network devices before triage efforts are able to stop the loop. As such, message loop prevention may help decrease the computational load among networked devices. At scale, the techniques may help prevent an exponential increase in data traffic that may propagate widely over the network. Loop prevention techniques may even prevent disabling of a network due to data traffic overload.
Claims20
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- receiving, at a first network node, one or more packets sent via an egress port of a second network node, the one or more packets representing a management message;
- identifying, at the first network node and from the one or more packets, a clock identifier (ID) associated with the egress port of the second network node;
- identifying, at the first network node, an ingress port associated with a recipient network node to which the first network node is configured to forward the management message;
- determining that the clock ID is associated with the ingress port;
- and
- based at least in part on the clock ID being associated with the ingress port, refraining from sending the management message to the ingress port associated with the recipient network node.
A computing device comprising:
- one or more processors;
- and
- one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:
- receive one or more packets sent via an egress port of another computing device, the one or more packets representing a management message;
- identify, from the one or more packets, a clock identifier (ID) associated with the egress port of the another computing device;
- determine that the clock ID is unknown by the computing device;
- and
- based at least in part on the clock ID being unknown by the computing device, refrain from sending the management message to recipient network devices.
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- receiving, at a first network node, one or more packets sent via an egress port of a second network node, the one or more packets representing a management message;
- identifying, at the first network node, a first ingress port of a third network node to which the first network node is configured to forward the management message;
- forwarding the management message to the ingress port of the third network node;
- identifying, at the first network node, a clock identifier (ID) associated with the first ingress port;
- identifying, at the first network node, a second ingress port to which the first network node is configured to forward the management message;
- determining that the clock ID associated with the first ingress port matches the clock ID associated with the second ingress port;
- and
- based at least in part on the clock ID of the first ingress port matching the clock ID of the second ingress port, refraining from forwarding the management message to the second ingress port.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.