Cisco Technology, Inc.

Future Wei Technologies, Inc.

Huawei Technologies Co., Limited

Alexander Clemm

Uma S Chunduri

Padmadevi Pillay-Esnault

Yingzhen Qu

Renwei Li

Shyyunn Lin

Alberto Gonzalez Prieto

Kiran Makhijani

Steve Chen-Lin Chang

Eric Albin Voit

Steve Chang

Yuquan Jiang

Lin Han

John Charles Strassner

Jiabin Zhao

Gaurang Rajeev Mokashi

Junekang Yang

Narayana Hosdurg Pai

Zbigniew W Blaszczyk

Rohit Mehendiratta

Eric Dorman

Alvaro E Retana

Toerless Eckert

Raghuram S Sudhaakar

Petre Dini

Jung Sauw Tjong

Fong Shen

Eshwar Rao Yedavalli

Bruno Klauser

Paul Donner

Raji Sridar

Apparao Tayi

Mouli Chandramouli

According to one aspect of the present disclosure a system identifies a service level agreement between an originator of a network flow, and service level objectives associated with the agreement. The system generates and inserts one or more packet contracts into one or more packets in a data flow, with each packet contract specifying instructions that nodes that process the packet to generate accounting data, enabling measurement of the service level objectives, which is stored with the packet. Packet contract generation occurs by retrieving one or more packet contract templates associated with the service level agreement and generates an agreement based on the template. The accounting data can be carried with the packet to an egress node which can use the accounting data to determine whether the customer service levels are being met.

Adaptive service level accounting system

According to one aspect of the present disclosure, a system is provided which allows a network service provider to address providing service assurances to comply with each service level agreement (SLA) agreed to with customers. A translation system accesses one or more network service agreements and parses the one or more network service agreements into a processing format. The system then determines which network services are specified by the network service agreement, and determines service level agreements for each service. The translation system then generates one or more service level objectives for each service level agreement and one or more service level values for each service level objective. One or more metrics are then selected to be associated with each value to be measured to determine compliance with the service level agreement. The system then stores each of the service level agreements, objectives, values and metrics as objects.

Agreement to service policy translation system

A network device includes a statelet storage storing statelets that retain state information associated with a packet flow through the network device and that the network device can interact with to control processing performed on packets of the data flow. The network device implements a set of instructions that interpret commands in the data packets to manage and interact with statelets. The statelets in the statelet storage are organized by a statelet key that is derived from information identifying the packet flow. Responsive to the commands in the packets, the network device can create, read, write, or delete statelets from the statelet storage. The statelet storage includes multiple statelets each statelet including multiple fields. The network device may access the statelets to control/monitor a packet flow using information in a network data plane without receiving control information from a network control plane.

Packet-programmable statelets

A mechanism is disclosed for performing implementing an operational flow profile. An initial packet is received that is associated with a flow. The initial packet contains a header including conditional commands related to an operational flow profile. The conditional commands are executed to initialize a state of an operational flow profile by allocating memory to store results of an aggregation function applied to the flow. A subsequent packet associated with the flow is received. The aggregation function is applied to the subsequent packet. Results of the aggregation function are stored to update the state of the operational flow profile.

Packet programmable flow telemetry profiling and analytics

A method implemented by a network element (NE) in a network, comprising receiving, by the NE, an advertisement comprising preferred path route (PPR) information representing a PPR from a source to a destination in the network, the PPR information comprising a PPR identifier (PPR-ID) and a plurality of PPR description elements (PPR-PDEs) each representing an element on the PPR, receiving, by the NE, a data packet comprising the PPR-ID, and forwarding, by the NE, the data packet having the PPR-ID to a next element on the PPR based on the plurality of PPR-PDEs.

Advertising and programming preferred path routes using interior gateway protocols

A mechanism is disclosed for implementing conditional commands carried by network data packets. A data flow including a data packet is received. The data packet includes a conditional command. A condition and a command are obtained from the conditional command. The mechanism determines that the condition is satisfied. Based on the determination that the condition is satisfied, the command is executed to alter handling of the data flow, alter handling of the data packet, or alter a context for the data flow.

Execution of a command within a conditional command received in a data packet

A mechanism is disclosed for performing network embedded real time service level objective (SLO) validation. The mechanism may be implemented by a network device including a processor configured to generate a data packet as part of a data flow, the data packet including a service level objective (SLO), the SLO indicating a network service threshold and including a key performance indicator (KPI), the KPI indicating a network service metric to be compared to the network service threshold; a transmitter coupled to the processor, the transmitter configured to transmit the data packet toward a network; and a receiver coupled to the processor, the receiver configured to receive a message, the message indicating to the network device whether a service provided by the network has met or violated the SLO.

Network embedded real time service level objective validation

A mechanism is disclosed for performing data plane based routing during a handover. The mechanism includes executing a user plane function (UPF). An uplink packet is received from a user equipment (UE) anchored to a fifth generation radio access network (5G) base station (gNB). The uplink packet includes a change destination command, a destination field, and metadata including a destination address for the uplink packet. A change destination command in the uplink packet is executed by setting the destination field of the uplink packet to the destination address in the metadata. The uplink packet is transmitted to the destination address set in the destination field.

Big packet protocol mobility instructions for 5G handovers

A Self-Describing Packet block (SDPB) is defined that allows concurrent processing of various fixed headers in a packet block defined to take advantage of multiple cores in a networking node forwarding path architecture. SPDB allows concurrent processing of various pieces of header data, metadata, and conditional commands carried in the same data packet by checking a serialization flag set upon creation of the data packet, without needing to serialize the processing or even parsing of the packet. When one or h more commands in one or more sub-blocks may be processed concurrently, the one or more commands are distributed to multiple processing resources for processing the commands in parallel. This architecture allows multiple unique functionalities each with their own separate outcome (execution of commands, doing service chaining, performing telemetry, allows virtualization and path steering) to be performed concurrently with simplified packet architecture without incurring additional encapsulation overhead.

Self-describing packet headers for concurrent processing

A method implemented by a network element (NE) in a network receiving, by the NE, an advertisement comprising preferred path route (PPR) information describing a path from an ingress NE to an egress NE in the network, the PPR information comprising a PPR identifier (PPR-ID) and an attribute associated with a resource to be reserved on the PPR, transmitting, by the NE, the advertisement comprising the PPR-ID and the attribute associated with the resource to be reserved on the PPR to another NE in the network, and updating, by the NE, a local forwarding database to include the PPR information in association with the egress NE in response to the NE being identified in the PPR information.

Resource reservation and maintenance for preferred path routes in a network

Latency Based Forwarding (LBF) techniques are presented for the management of the latencies, or delays, of packets forwarded over nodes, such as routers, of a network. In addition to a network header indicating a destination node for receiving the packet, a packet also includes an LBF header indicating the packets accumulated delay since leaving the sender, a maximum latency for the entire journey from the sender to the receiver and a minimum latency for the entire journey from the sender to the receiver. When a packet is received at a node, based on the accumulated delay, the maximum latency, and the minimum latency, the node places the packet in a forwarding queue to manage the delays between the sender and the receiver. The LBF can also indicate a policy for the forwarding node to used when determining the enqueueing of the packet.

Latency based forwarding of packets with destination policies

A method implemented by a receiving host entity comprises transmitting, by a transmitter of the receiving host entity, an anonymized identifier of the receiving host entity, wherein the anonymized identifier is a temporary and recyclable identifier identifying the receiving host entity, and receiving, by a receiver of the receiving host entity, a data packet from a sending host entity, wherein the data packet includes the anonymized identifier.

Receiver directed anonymization of identifier flows in identity enabled networks

Self-driving packets with conditional commands

A method implemented by a firewall device in a network, comprising storing, by a memory, a firewall policy comprising information indicating whether to forward a data packet from a sending host entity to a receiving host entity, receiving, by a receiver, a data packet from a sending host entity, wherein the data packet includes an identifier of the receiving host entity, and determining, by a processor coupled to the memory and the receiver, whether to forward the data packet to the receiving host entity based on the firewall policy and the identifier of the receiving host entity.

Identity and metadata based firewalls in identity enabled networks

A mechanism is disclosed for performing network embedded real time service level objective (SLO) validation. A first data packet is received as part of a data flow. The first data packet includes a SLO indicating a network service threshold, the SLO including a key performance indicator (KPI) indicating a network service metric to be compared to the network service threshold. A service provided by the network device is measured according to the network service metric indicated by the KPI to obtain a measured service result. The measured service result is compared to the network service threshold indicated by the SLO to determine when the service provided by the network device has violated the SLO. Based on the determination that the service has violated the SLO, a defined action is performed.

Growing community of inventors

Los Gatos, CA, United States of America

Alexander Clemm