Cisco Technology, Inc.

Redback Networks Inc.

Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

Ericsson Ab

Enke Chen

Naiming Shen

Jun Zhuang

Carlos M Pignataro

Rajiv Asati

Keyur Patel

Rex Emmanuel Fernando

Pradosh Mohapatra

Shu Lin

Michael Lee Sullenberger

Ravi Chandra

Jia Chen

Jenny Yuan

Pedro Miguel Martins Roque Marques

Jennifer Yuan

Srihari Ramachandra

Jining Tian

Techniques for deploying IPv6 routing are disclosed. A system, process, and/or computer program product for deploying IPv6 routing includes advertising in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) a new address-family capability in combination with an existing address-family in a network that supports a plurality of address families, and undoing BGP filters to allow BGP routes to be exchanged at a time that a network administrator enables the new address-family capability in the network.

Deploying IPv6 routing

In one embodiment, a method includes performing, by a router, a destination address lookup of an IP packet in a Forwarding Information Base (FIB) and identifying, by the router, an equal cost multi-path (ECMP) object from the destination address lookup. The ECMP object includes a plurality of paths for forwarding the IP packet to a destination associated with a destination address. The method further includes determining, by the router, a source interface associated with the IP packet, determining, by the router, that the source interface matches an egress interface associated with a path among the plurality of paths, and communicating, by the router, the IP packet based on the path to the destination using the egress interface.

Systems and methods for maintaining consistency between interfaces of locally sourced packets

A method is provided in one example embodiment and includes configuring on a network element a first tunnel from the network element to a first network, wherein the configuring comprises mapping a nexthop address of the local network element to a transport address of the tunnel on the network to create a first nexthop-to-transport mapping for the network element; and advertising the first nexthop-to-transport mapping along with routing information for the network element to remote network elements.

Virtual private network forwarding and nexthop to transport mapping scheme

In one embodiment, a method includes generating at a network device, a trace packet comprising an IP (Internet Protocol) to Source Group Tag (SGT) binding, transmitting the trace packet from the network device to an SGT capable device, wherein at least one non-SGT capable device is interposed in a path between the network device and the SGT capable device, and receiving at the network device, a reply packet from the SGT capable device in response to the trace packet, the reply packet indicating that the IP to SGT binding was installed at the SGT capable device. An apparatus and logic are also disclosed herein.

Network wide source group tag binding propagation

In an embodiment, a method comprises: determining that a session restart on a restarting node has been initiated; in response to determining that the restarting node has preserved a last acknowledged version of routing information received from a peer node, and determining that the restarting node has preserved a routing state corresponding to the last acknowledged version of routing information, transmitting to the peer node a message indicating that the last acknowledged version of routing information and the routing state have been preserved at the restarting node; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.

Accelerated routing convergence

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving routing information at an alternate route reflector in a network, identifying at the alternate route reflector, an alternate path different from a primary path selected and advertised at a primary route reflector in the network, and advertising at the alternate route reflector, the alternate path. The primary and alternate paths define paths for a destination and the alternate path is the only path advertised by the alternate route reflector for the destination.

Advertising alternate paths at border gateway protocol route reflectors

A method and an apparatus to select a route in a network device within a networked system have been disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving at a router in a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) network a first route entry via local redistribution from a first protocol to BGP and a second route entry from a peer router coupled to the router via the network, wherein the first route entry is received earlier than the second route entry. The method may further include downloading administrative distances of the first and the second route entries to a route information base (RIB) of the router and redistributing the administrative distances from the RIB to a BGP table maintained by a BGP module of the router. In some embodiments, the method further includes selecting one of the first and the second route entries based on their administrative distances.

Method and an apparatus for route selection in routing protocols

A method and system for providing routing instance information are disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving a trace packet at a network device, generating an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packet in response to the trace packet, and transmitting the ICMP packet. The ICMP packet includes routing instance information contained within the network device.

ICMP with IP routing instance information

The embodiments described herein provide methods and apparatuses for implementing a User Datagram Protocol traceroute probe extension. In an example embodiment, a request to transmit a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packet to a remote destination is received. A probe header and a probe data element is then stored in a data field of the UDP packet. The UDP packet is then transmitted toward the remote destination. In an example embodiment, a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packet is received and it is determined whether the UDP packet includes a probe data structure. When the determination is affirmative, the probe data structure is processed.

User datagram protocol traceroute probe extension

A method and apparatus for route oscillation reduction is described. A method in a network element comprises advertising to a set of one or more internal peers a best external route if a best overall route is not an external route, wherein external routes are routes communicated from an external peer that is not within the network element's group, wherein said set of internal peers are within the network element's group, and advertising to a set of one or more external peers a best internal route that has been received from an internal peer if the best overall route is not an internal route.

Method and apparatus for route oscillation reduction

A method an apparatus for multiple contexts and layer 3 virtual private networks is described. A method comprises providing a layer 3 virtual private network (VPN) to a first customer; providing backbone access to a second customer; and maintaining on a single network element a first set of information for the first customer separately from a second set of information for the second customer.

Method and apparatus for multiple contexts and layer 3 virtual private networks

An improved group-based routing update technique allows limited per neighbor customization of routing update messages generated by an interdomain router for its neighboring peer routers within autonomous systems of a computer network. The technique may be employed when the neighboring peer routers share identical routing policies, but the routing update messages differ only in certain attributes with known locations and lengths. Appropriate values of the location and length attributes for each neighboring router are calculated and stored during a replication stage of the improved technique. Before each message is transmitted, the proper location and length attributes of the message are updated with the stored values for the respective neighbor.

Technique for group-based routing update with limited per neighbor/adjacency customization

A computer implemented method and apparatus for an attribute-oriented routing update is described. The method comprises selecting an updated set of attributes in a routing table before selecting a set of updated destinations associated with the selected set of attributes, wherein the attributes are stored in an attribute table as a portion of the routing table and the attributes do not include the conventional network prefixes. An update message that includes the set of updated destinations for the set of attributes is then generated. The method is also extended to extraction of unreachable destinations by using a dummy attribute in the routing table, wherein the dummy attribute is selected first, followed by extracting the unreachable destinations.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Enke Chen