Scalable application level monitoring for SDN networks

A network device configured to execute a method to reduce bandwidth and compute resources needed by a controller of a software defined networking (SDN) controller by distributing monitoring of virtual network functions (VNFs) to data plane nodes (DPNs) in a SDN network, the network device comprising:

• a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored therein an application monitor;
• and
• a processor coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable medium,
• the processor to execute the application monitor,
• the application monitor
• to receive a monitoring request from the SDN controller to monitor a VNF,
• to receive a byte sequence from the SDN controller for the VNF,
• to determine whether a monitoring response message from the VNF matches the byte sequence at a given offset, wherein the given offset indicates a location in the monitoring response message from where the matching between the monitoring response message and the byte sequence starts,
• to generate flow table entries for monitoring the VNF by matching the byte sequence with monitoring response messages from the VNF,
• to send a monitoring request message to a malfunctioning VNF,
• to receive an unexpected response from the malfunctioning VNF or determine that a response to the monitoring request message has timed out, and
• to send the unexpected response or a notification of timeout to the SDN controller.

A computing device functioning as a network node, the computing device to execute a plurality of virtual machines for implementing network function virtualization, wherein a virtual machine from the plurality of virtual machines is configured to execute a method to reduce bandwidth and compute resources needed by a controller of a software defined networking (SDN) controller by distributing monitoring of virtual network functions (VNFs) to data plane nodes (DPNs) in a SDN network, the computing device comprising:

• a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored therein an application monitor;
• and
• a processor coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable medium,
• the processor to execute the virtual machine from the plurality of virtual machines,
• the virtual machine to execute the application monitor,
• the application monitor
• to receive a monitoring request from the SDN controller to monitor a VNF,
• to receive a byte sequence from the SDN controller for the VNF,
• to determine whether a monitoring response message from the VNF matches the byte sequence at a given offset, wherein the given offset indicates a location in the monitoring response message from where the matching between the monitoring response message and the byte sequence starts, and
• to generate flow table entries for monitoring the VNF by matching the byte sequence with monitoring response messages from the VNF,
• wherein when a response request is sent to a malfunctioning VNF, the application monitor to receive an unexpected response from the malfunctioning VNF or determine that the response request has timed out, and
• to send the unexpected response or a notification of timeout to the SDN controller.

A control plane device to implement a control plane of a software defined networking (SDN) network including a plurality of network devices implementing a data plane of the SDN network, the control plane device configured to execute a method to reduce bandwidth and compute resources needed by a controller of a software defined networking (SDN) controller by distributing monitoring of virtual network functions (VNFs) to data plane nodes (DPNs) in a SDN network, the control plane device comprising:

• a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored therein an application monitor;
• and
• a processor coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable medium,
• the processor to execute the application monitor,
• the application monitor
• to send an initial monitoring request for a VNF to a data plane node (DPN),
• to receive a monitoring response message from the DPN,
• to determine whether an offset for a byte sequence and to send the offset to the DPN,
• to send the byte sequence to the DPN for the VNF to enable the DPN to identify monitoring response messages from the VNF to forward to the application monitor, wherein the identification of the monitoring response messages is based on matching of the monitoring response messages with the byte sequence, and wherein the offset indicates a location in the monitoring response message from where the matching between the monitoring response message and the byte sequence starts, and
• to receive an unexpected response or a notification of timeout from the DPN when the DPN receives the unexpected response from a malfunctioning VNF or the response from the malfunctioning VNF times out.