Offloading Tenant Traffic in Virtual Networks

A traffic offloading method comprising:

• receiving a policy information that comprises one or more policies and a network mapping message that comprises a network mapping between a receiver tenant system and a network virtualization edge (NVE) associated with the receiver tenant system;
• generating a policy based routing entry in accordance with the policy information and the network mapping information;
• receiving tenant traffic intended for the receiver tenant system from a sender tenant system;
• and
• sending the tenant traffic within a network to an NVE associated with the receiver tenant system using the policy based routing entry, wherein sending the tenant traffic using the policy based routing applies the policy information to the tenant traffic, and wherein sending the tenant traffic using the policy base routing entry bypasses a tenant service system.

In a network, a traffic offloading method comprising:

• receiving an offload traffic notification, wherein the offload traffic notification identifies a sender tenant system and a receiver tenant system and comprises policy information, and wherein the offload traffic notification indicates a bidirectional traffic flow between the sender tenant system and the receiver tenant system;
• determining a first network mapping between the sender tenant system and a network virtualization edge (NVE) associated with the sender tenant system and a second network mapping between the receiver tenant system and an NVE associated with the receiver tenant system;
• generating a first network mapping message that comprises the first network mapping and a second network mapping message that comprises the second network mapping in response to receiving the offload traffic notification;
• and
• sending the first network mapping message and the policy information to the NVE associated with the receiver tenant system and the second network mapping message and the policy information to the NVE associated with the sender tenant system within a network.