Stateful processing for stateless forwarding element
AssigneeNicira, Inc.
InventorsJustin Pettit, Jonathan Stringer
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Some embodiments provide a method for performing stateful processing of a packet at a flow-based managed forwarding element (MFE). The method receives a packet at the MFE without stateful connection status information. The method sends the packet to a module separate from the MFE that stores stateful connection information for a plurality of connections. The method receives the packet from the module with stateful connection status information appended to the packet. The method performs an action on the packet based on the appended stateful connection status information.
Claims19
A method for performing stateful processing of a packet at a flow-based managed forwarding element (MFE) implementing a software switch on a host machine, the method comprising:
- receiving a packet at the MFE without stateful connection status information, a header of the packet comprising Internet Protocol (IP) layer and transport layer addresses;
- sending the packet from the MFE to a module within the host machine and separate from the MFE, the module storing stateful connection information for a plurality of connections, the stateful connection status information identifying whether the packet belongs to a new connection or an existing connection;
- receiving, from the module within the host machine, the packet with stateful connection status information appended to the packet;
- and
- performing an action on the packet based on the appended stateful connection status information.
A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program which when executed by at least one processing unit executes a flow-based managed forwarding element (MFE) implementing a software switch on a host machine for performing stateful processing of a packet, the program comprising sets of instructions for:
- receiving a packet without stateful connection status information, a header of the packet comprising Internet Protocol (IP) layer and transport layer addresses;
- sending the packet from the MFE to a module within the host machine and separate from the MFE, the module storing stateful connection information for a plurality of connections, the stateful connection status information identifying whether the packet belongs to a new connection or an existing connection;
- receiving, from the module within the host machine, the packet with stateful connection status information appended to the packet;
- and
- performing an action on the packet based on the appended stateful connection status information.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.