Cisco Technology, Inc.

Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Dongling Duan

Nitin Kumar

Neeraj Malhotra

Satya Ranjan Mohanty

Narasimha Prasad Salagame Nagaraj

Ravi Manghirmalani

Ke Zhang

Pradeep Singh

Mark Kamichoff

Chakravarthi S Chigurupati

Tejas H Rajkotia

Bharat M Bhojwani

Techniques and mechanisms for a control plane approach for dense topologies that focusses on discovering shared ECMP groups in the control plane independent of per-prefix learning and then learning prefixes via these shared ECMP groups instead of learning prefixes via one next-hop at a time. In dense topologies, this approach helps minimize BGP path scale, corresponding signaling and enables control plane scaling that is an order of magnitude higher than a traditional eBGP control plane. During link and node topology changes, the described control plane approach enables control plane signaling that is prefix independent and an order of magnitude lower. A control plane approach to path-list sharing and prefix independent signaling on link and node topology changes enables prefix independent convergence (PIC) in scenarios that would not be possible otherwise with traditional FIB driven path-list sharing and PIC.

Hierarchical ECMP control plane for dense topologies

An extension is provided to a Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) that can use the LACP protocol transport and provides Link Aggregation Group (LAG) management while also functioning as a full liveness detection protocol. Bi-directional link detection is supported and timers are configurable to any number. The extension can be backwards compatible with standard LACP and can use a subtype that is specified as unused. The extension can start up using standard LACP packet rates and include additional information in the unused subtype. If a LACP speaker does not support the extension, then the protocol conforms to standard LACP. A state machine of the extension is used if it detects conforming information from a peer speaker. The state machine can allow faster detection should a link error occur.

Network link liveness detection

Disclosed are, inter alia, methods, apparatus, and means for stateful switching between reliable transport modules for communicating with an external peer without losing the transport layer connection. Primary and standby reliable transport protocol modules each maintain state concerning the reliable transport connection (e.g., data, segmentation, acknowledgements) such that if the primary or standby reliable transport protocol module fails, the other can resume by itself such that the communication with the peer transport application does not need to be restarted. Also, by the communications subsystem of a device providing copies of received reliable transport protocol messages directly to both the primary and standby reliable transport protocol modules, upon failover, the communications subsystem does not need to be reconfigured for resuming operations as, for example, the standby reliable transport protocol module will already be receiving these packets.

Stateful switching between reliable transport modules for communicating with an external peer without losing the transport layer connection

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Dongling Duan