Future Wei Technologies, Inc.

New York University

Cing-Yu Chu

Hung-Hsiang Jonathan Chao

Yang Xu

Min Luo

Kang Xi

Jonathan Chao

The problem of recovering from multiple link failures in a way that is quick, avoids loops, avoids packet modifications, and that avoids significant modifications to existing routers is solved by: (1) associating a network rerouting unit (NRU) with each of the plurality of routers; (2) configuring each router so that if a link (or more specifically, any link) directly connected to the router fails, the router redirects any packets whose next hop is a port terminating an end of the failed link to the NRU associated with the router; (3) executing a routing protocol on each of the NRUs whereby each NRU will learn a topology of the communications network; (4) receiving by a first NRU, a packet redirected from the router associated with the first NRU; and (5) responsive to receiving, by the first NRU, the packet redirected from the router associated with the first NRU, (i) identifying a link directly connected to the router as a failed link using a destination address in the redirected packet, and the topology of the network learned by the first NRU, (ii) determining an alternative path to the destination address of the redirected packet bypassing the identified failed link, and (iii) tunneling the redirected packet to an intermediate node on or associated with the alternative path using encapsulation. NRUs provide more programmability and better flexibility, thereby allowing network operators to deploy new network functions and features on demand in a timely and agile manner. Such NRUs provide resilience as a network function ('RaaNF') that can be plugged into a running network easily and help the network recover from link failures without modifying existing routers.

Network function virtualization ('NFV') based communications network resilience

A network controller comprising a processor configured to obtain topology information of a network, wherein the topology information indicates a plurality of non-software-defined networking (non-SDN) network elements (NEs) interconnected by a plurality of links in the network, analyze each non-SDN NE according to the topology information to determine whether the non-SDN NE is a candidate NE for establishing a backup tunnel to protect a single-link failure at one of the plurality of links, and select a plurality of target NEs from the candidate NEs to protect against all single link-failures in the network, and a transmitter coupled to the processor and configured to send a first message to a first of the target NEs to dynamically enable software-defined networking (SDN) functionalities at the first target NE in order to facilitate single-link failure protection in the network.

Capacity-aware heuristic approach for placing software-defined networking (SDN) switches in hybrid SDN networks for single link/node failure

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Brooklyn, NY, United States of America

Cing-Yu Chu