Juniper Networks, Inc.

Cunzhi Lu

Ramasamy Ramanathan

Kaushik Ghosh

Anil Lohiya

Ramanarayanan Ramakrishnan

Manoj Sharma

Shrinivasa Kini

Sri Sairam Goli

In general, techniques for facilitating a distributed network (L3) subnet by which multiple independent control planes of network devices connected to physically separate L2 networks provide L2 reachability to/from a single L3 subnet. In some examples, a shared L2 network physically situated to connect a plurality of physically separate L2 networks 'stitches' the L2 networks together within the respective, independent control planes of switches such that the control planes bridge L2 traffic for a single bridge domain for the separate L2 networks to the shared L2 network and visa-versa. Each of the independent control planes may be configured with a virtual IRB instance associated with the bridge domain and with a common network subnet. Each of the virtual IRBs provides a functionally similar routing interface for the single bridge domain for the separate L2 networks and allows the shared network subnet to be distributed among the independent control planes.

Distributed network subnet

A provider edge bridge in a service provider network receives multiple media access control (MAC) Registration Protocol (MMRP) registration messages from customer networks via tunnels. The provider edge bridge snoops the MMRP registration messages to obtain multicast MAC addresses from the registration messages, and tunnels the MMRP registration messages toward one or more other bridges. The provider edge bridge constructs multicast forwarding tables based on the multicast addresses obtained from snooping the MMRP registrations, and uses the multicast forwarding tables for forwarding data units from the provider edge bridge towards destinations.

Network provider bridge MMRP registration snooping

Growing community of inventors

Milpitas, CA, United States of America

Cunzhi Lu