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AssigneeBrocade Communications Systems, Inc.
InventorsEswara Chinthalapati, Sayed Mohd Saquib, Dilip Kumar
Estimating the term…
Techniques for performing flow-specific failure detection in SDN networks are provided. In one embodiment, a computer system (e.g., an SDN controller) can determine a flow to be monitored in a network. The computer system can then transmit first and second messages to first and second network devices in the network respectively, where the first network device is an upstream device in the flow, where the second network device is a downstream device in the flow, and where the first and second messages instruct the first and second network devices to collect local data rate information for the flow.
A method comprising:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon program code executable by a computer system, the program code causing the computer system to:
A computer system comprising:
A method comprising:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon program code executable by a network device that is an upstream device in a flow, the program code causing the network device to:
A network device that is an upstream device in a flow, the network device comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level: packet rate
Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications: localisation of faults
Capturing of monitoring data: using flow identification
By checking availability: by checking connectivity
About 9 years 2 months of term left · ends 5 Jan 2036 (estimated)
As known in the art, Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a computer networking paradigm in which the system(s) that make decisions about where traffic is sent (i.e., the control plane) are decoupled from the system(s) that forward traffic to their intended destinations (i.e., the data plane). By way of example, FIG. 1A depicts a simplified representation of an SDN network 100 comprising an SDN controller 102 and three network switches 104, 106, 108. In this example, SDN controller 102 constitutes the control plane of network 100 and is responsible for, e.g.: (1) maintaining a global view of network 100; (2) determining (via one or more applications running on, or in communication with, controller 102) forwarding rules to be followed by switches 104-108 in order to achieve a desired network behavior; and (3) causing those rules to be programmed into the hardware forwarding tables of switches 104-108. Switches 104-108 constitute the data plane of network 100 and are responsible for, e.g., forwarding, at line rate, network traffic in accordance with the forwarding rules determined by SDN controller 102.
In current SDN networks, the detection of network faults is handled centrally by the SDN controller via Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP). An example of a conventional fault detection method 150 that can be performed by SDN controller 102 of FIG. 1A using LLDP is depicted in FIG. 1B. At step (1) (reference numeral 152), SDN controller 102 constructs and sends out an LLDP packet with a “packet_out” message to each connected switch. SDN controller 102 typically performs this step every second.
At step (2) (reference numeral 154), each switch (104, 106, 108) receives the LLDP packet sent by SDN controller 102 and forwards the packet on all of its outgoing ports (to other switches in the network).
FIG. 1A depicts an example SDN network.
FIG. 1B depicts an example LLDP workflow within the SDN network of FIG. 1A.
FIG. 2 depicts an SDN network that supports active path tracing and flow-specific failure detection according to an embodiment.
In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous examples and details are set forth in order to provide an understanding of various embodiments. It will be evident, however, to one skilled in the art that certain embodiments can be practiced without some of these details, or can be practiced with modifications or equivalents thereof.
1. Overview
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide techniques for improving the resiliency of SDN networks against various types of network faults. In one set of embodiments, these techniques include an improved fault detection method (referred to as “active path tracing”) in which an SDN controller instructs first and second switches at the endpoints of a link/path to respectively transmit, and monitor for, probe packets along the link/path. If the second switch determines that it has not received a probe packet from the first switch within a predetermined timeout period (or has not received a predetermined number of consecutive probe packets), the second switch can transmit a notification to the SDN controller indicating that the link or ports between the two switches have failed. With this approach, there is no need for the SDN controller itself to send out probe (e.g., LLDP) packets and monitor for the return of those packets in order to detect faults; instead, the controller can effectively offload these tasks to the switches in the network. As a result, the amount of control traffic exchanged between the SDN controller and the switches can be significantly reduced when compared to traditional LLDP fault detection, which in turn can allow for greater efficiency/scalability and faster detection times.