Alcatel-lucent USA Inc.

Alcatel Lucent

Alcatel USA Sourcing, L.p.

Alcatel IP Networks, Inc.

Joe Regan

Wenao Hu

Vach P Kompella

Nicholas W Tingle

Florin S Balus

Paul Kwok

Kendall Harvey

Akhil Duggal

Kajal Saha

Mark A L Smallwood

Johan Van Besouw

Xiang-Ling Tan

Sunil Khankekar

Marcelo Mourier

Sofronis Sofroniou

Richard Todd

Richard W Todd

Mark AL Smallwood

Echo messaging for operation, administration, and management of a service-based distribution path and associated services are disclosed. Service-based distribution paths or transport tunnels include services mapped or bound to a path associated with the transport tunnel. Echo messaging provides OAM capabilities to monitor the operational state of a service-based distribution path, including determining configuration, connectivity, and other characteristics of the path and associated services that transport data. OAM functions provided by echo messaging enable OAM functions despite service volume along a core network, path or set of paths.

OAM echo messaging to verify a service-based network distribution path

Data mirroring in a service such as a virtual private LAN service is disclosed. Data packets, segments, frames, or other forms of encapsulation may be mirrored off of a core network (e.g., IP, TCP) to one or more mirroring destinations without using a parallel network. Encapsulation techniques are provided that enable packets to be mirrored and transmitted across services such as VPLS, MPLS, and others to a mirror destination. Once received at the mirror destination, mirrored packets may be used for troubleshooting in a more efficient and less resource and time-consuming manner.

Data mirroring in a service

A technique for operating a network involves controlling the black-holing of traffic by selectively redirecting unicast traffic destined for a dual-homed customer equipment (CE) device from a first provider backbone bridge (PBB) provider edge (PE) device to a second PBB PE device in response to a service failure. Unicast traffic is selectively redirected from the first PBB PE device to the second PBB PE device for a time interval that is long enough to enable the customer source MAC address (CMAC)-to-backbone MAC address (BMAC) association of the second PBB PE device to be learned by other PBB PE devices.

Failure protection in a provider backbone bridge network using selective redirection

Inserting an address used for performing such OAM functions in an efficient way that is transparent to a customer or service using the network path is disclosed. An indication is received that a source address reserved for OAM use should be inserted into a forwarding database associated with a provider network node, such as a provider edge device, that receives the indication. The address is inserted into a forwarding database as an address that is owned by the provider network node and reserved for OAM use. One or more other nodes associated with a service with which the OAM address is associated may be notified that the OAM address is associated with the provider network node that owns the OAM address.

Injecting addresses to enable OAM functions

A system and method for multi-nodal APS (MN-APS) protection switching for a virtual private LAN service (VPLS) using a redundant pair of PE (provider edge) nodes is provided. In the event of an APS switchover, the previously active node of the redundant pair sends explicit requests to the other provider edge nodes to flush their MAC address entries that they had previously learned through the previously active node, facilitating quicker re-convergence and reduction of black-holing.

System and method for resilient VPLS over multi-nodal APS protected provider edge nodes

Service-based distribution paths that provide transport tunnels and control capabilities for data communication over a service are disclosed. Service-based distribution paths or transport tunnels include services mapped or bound to the transport tunnel. Encapsulation provides for packet-by-packet handling, including service separation of packets based on header data included within each packet. Services may be monitored, managed, and controlled by performing operational determinations between end points to ensure end-to-end service configuration and connectivity are established.

Using network transport tunnels to provide service-based data transport

A technique for operating a network involves controlling the black-holing of traffic by forcing customer source MAC address (CMAC)-to-backbone source MAC address (BMAC) associations at provider backbone bridge (PBB) provider edge (PE) devices to be flushed from their corresponding forwarding information bases (FIBs) in response to a service failure so that new CMAC-to-BMAC associations, which are reflective of a secondary traffic path, are learned faster than they would otherwise be learned if the network had relied on native functionality to learn new CMAC-to-BMAC associations that are reflective of the secondary traffic path.

Failure protection in a provider backbone bridge network using forced MAC flushing

An enhanced virtual router redundancy protocol for manipulating master router selection within a network is disclosed. The use of a priority control policy and priority values take into account conditions and events that may distinguish the desirability of one router over another. Explicit priority values may be specified to indicate the explicit priority of a particular router instance. Delta priority values may also be used to decrement or increment a base priority for a particular router instance. By using priority control policies and priority values to select a master, improved control, management, and manipulation of virtual router instances over a particular IP core network interface are enabled.

Enhancement of VRRP interface and router selection where an non-owner router is configured to respond to control and management messages addressed to an address associated with the virtual redundant router

A header value or label, referred to herein as a source station identification (SSID), is added to an encapsulated packet header, such as by adding the SSID as a label to the bottom of a stack of MPLS labels. The SSID comprises a unique identifier that identifies the PE that originated the packet. In some embodiments, the IP address of the originating PE may be used as the SSID for that PE. The PE receiving this packet can then associate the source Ethernet MAC address of received TLS traffic, e.g., with the originating PE. Given the SSID of the originating PE, the receiving PE is able to determine which LSP to use to send Ethernet traffic to the station with the learned MAC address.

Source identifier for MAC address learning

Loss of connectivity on a mesh or virtual service (e.g., VPLS) may be restored by 'stitching' a healing path between an affected node and another node on the mesh. Connectivity may be restored by 'healing' or constructing an alternate path or connection between the affected node and the mesh. Unidirectional and bidirectional healing may be used to establish an alternate path between the affected node and the mesh. Additionally, removing pseudowire connections between the affected node and the mesh may be performed, while establishing a spoke connection to an advertised, available router to create a new connection or &#x201c;stitch&#x201d; together existing connections.

Virtual private network fault tolerance

Setting packet queue priority is disclosed. A rate associated with a packet queue is measured. The rate is compared to a quality of service metric. A priority is assigned to the packet queue based at least in part on the comparison between the rate and the quality of service metric. The quality of service metric may be a committed information rate and/or a peak information rate.

Assigning packet queue priority

Extending the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) to provide redundancy and avoid loops in the topology of a service domain associated with a data transport service provided using a provider core network is disclosed. At each of a plurality of provider edge (PE) devices participating in the service, each participating PE being connected to the other participating PE's by a full mesh of mesh connections through the provider core network, a virtual core port is defined that encompasses all of the ports on the PE that are associated with a mesh connection from the PE to one or more other PE's participating in the service. Each participating PE is configured to associate the virtual core port with a virtual core bridge representing the core of the service domain. It is ensured that the virtual core bridge becomes and remains the root bridge.

Growing community of inventors

Pleasanton, CA, United States of America

Joe Regan