Cisco Technology, Inc.

Juniper Networks, Inc.

John Galen Scudder

David Delano Ward

Clarence Filsfils

Stefano Benedetto Previdi

Keyur Patel

Ross W Callon

Chandrashekhar Appanna

Jean-Philippe Vasseur

Stewart Frederick Bryant

Muthurajah Sivabalan

Ian Michael Charles Shand

Jim Guichard

Alia Karin Atlas

Gargi Nalawade

George Suwala

Jeffrey M Haas

Jonathan T Looney

Paul Arthur Jensen

Qi-Zhong Cao

Andrew J Lunstad

Stu Grossman

Natarajan Shankar

Yakov Rekhter

Shraddha Hegde

Nischal Sheth

Anthony Joseph Li

Jonathan C Barth

Hannes Gredler

Sameer Seth

David Alexander Ball

Nischal Singh

Olivier Bonaventure

Rahul Unnikrishnan

Anca Zamfir

Martin Djernaes

Pranav Mehta

Rodolphe Figaro

Thomas P Barron

Vishnu Pavan Kumar Beeram

Pierre Francois

R Eric Bennett

Martin Hesketh

Antoni B Przygienda

Nirmalya Mukhopadhyay

Eric R Bennett

A disclosed computing device may include (1) a storage device configured to store a database that identifies states of nodes included in a network and (2) circuitry configured to (A) receive one or more packet fragments that account for at least one change made to a state of one of the nodes in a transaction, (B) identify, among the packet fragments, a transaction identifier corresponding to the transaction and an indication of a total number of packet fragments representing the transaction, and (C) update the database to account for the change upon ensuring receipt of all the packet fragments representing the transaction based at least in part on the transaction identifier and the indication. Various other devices, systems, and methods are also disclosed.

Devices, systems, and methods for updating remote databases via flooded packet fragments

Responsive to receiving the BGP UPDATE message, a route reflector may (1) update a CLUSTER_LIST value and, if needed, an ORIGINATOR_ID value, in a path attribute section in the BGP UPDATE message to generate a revised BGP UPDATE message, and (2) send the revised BGP UPDATE message to a client of the route reflector, regardless of whether or not one of (A) field validity checking of the BGP UPDATE message, (B) Adj-RIBS-In update using the BGP UPDATE message, (C) decision processing for route selection using information in the BGP UPDATE message, or (D) Adj-RIBS-Out update using the BGP UPDATE message, is completed (or perhaps even started). This provides faster route propagation and avoids delays associated with processing BGP UPDATE messages (NLRI with advertisements and withdrawals) at each hop the NLRIs using conventional BGP such as next-hop validation, best path selection, etc.

Fast routing convergence for border gateway protocl (BGP) systems including one or more route reflectors (RRs)

A network node may include one or more processors. The one or more processors may receive a message that is associated with one or more signatures and one or more second signatures. The one or more signatures may have been validated by a particular node. The one or more processors may determine that the particular node is a trusted node. The network node may be configured not to validate signatures that have been validated by a trusted node. The one or more processors may determine that the one or more signatures have been validated by the particular node. The one or more processors may sign or provide the message, without validating the one or more signatures, based on determining that the one or more signatures have been validated by the particular node.

Selective verification of signatures by network nodes

In general, techniques are described for dynamically controlling host-bound traffic by dynamically adding and updating, within the forwarding plane of a network device, network packet policers that each constrains, for one or more packet flows, an amount of host-bound traffic of the packet flows permitted to reach the control plane in accordance with available resources. In one example, a control plane of the network device detects internal congestion in the communication path from the forwarding plane to control plane (the 'host-bound path'), identifies packet flows utilizing an excessive amount of host-bound path resources, computes limits for the identified packet flows, and adds 'penalty-box policers' configured with the computed limits for the identified packet flows to the forwarding plane. The forwarding plane subsequently applies the policers to the identified packet flows to constrain the amount of traffic of the packet flows allowed to reach the control plane to the computed limits.

Penalty-box policers for network device control plane protection

This application describes techniques for replicating data at a primary routing engine of a network device before processing the data at a transport layer of the primary routing engine, wherein the data is to be sent to a routing peer via a routing communication session, and sending the replicated data to a secondary routing engine of the network device to be processed at a transport layer of the secondary routing engine. The secondary routing engine, in response to detecting that a socket buffer for buffering the replicated data has reached a predefined high occupancy threshold, outputs a notification to the primary routing engine. In response to receiving the notification, an application-layer routing process of the primary routing engine refrains from sending at least some of a plurality of routing updates to the routing peer, and continues to send keepalive messages for the routing communication session to the routing peer.

Non-stop routing with internal session mirroring and adaptive application-level rate limiting

In general, techniques are described for selectively invoking graceful restart procedures when a route reflector member of a redundant route cluster fails. In one example, a method is provided that includes determining, by a provider edge router that supports graceful restart procedures, that a first router forms a redundant group with at least a second router. The method also includes detecting a failure of the first router and determining that at least the second router in the redundant group is operating approximately while the first router is failed. The method further includes overriding graceful restart procedures with respect to the failed first router when at least the second router is operating. The method also includes forwarding one or more data packets according to route information provided via the second router.

Selective BGP graceful restart in redundant router deployments

In one embodiment, a router generates a notification message that indicates the router is to be gracefully removed from service. The router sends the notification message to peers of the router in a network. The router then continues to forward packets for a grace period after sending the notification message, to permit backup paths to be propagated to peers, and to be put into service, prior to withdrawal from service of paths through the router. Thereafter, the router is removed from service at the expiration of the grace period.

Technique for graceful shutdown of a routing protocol in a network

Advertised routes are associated with a particular tag in a routing database in a second router. A first router subsequently sends one or more messages associated with a route withdraw operation that specifies the particular tag, such that second router can identify, based on the particular tag, a set including multiple routes, and remove those multiple routes from its routing database. For example, the tag may be a Border Gateway Protocol attribute, a Border Gateway Protocol communities attribute, or some other indication, numeric quantity, or opaque value.

Withdrawing multiple advertised routes based on a single tag which may be of particular use in border gateway protocol

A method and apparatus for recovering from a controlled failover of a BGP speaker is provided. A user sends, to a network element, a request to switch a designation of an active Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) speaker of the network element from a first BGP speaker to a second BGP speaker. After receiving the request, the network element pauses operation of a transport for BGP. Routing data, which describes a state of a first routing information base (RIB) maintained by the active BGP speaker, is transferred from the first BGP speaker to the second BGP speaker. Thereafter, the first BGP speaker may instruct the second BGP speaker to become the active BGP speaker. After the second BGP speaker becomes the active BGP speaker, the second BGP speaker resumes operation of the BGP transport.

Method for recovery of a controlled failover of a border gateway protocol speaker

This disclosure describes techniques for protecting an endpoint of a label switched path. In one embodiment, a system includes an ingress router, a primary egress router, backup router, and a point of local repair (PLR) router. The ingress router, the PLR router, and the first egress router form a first label switched path. The backup router provides protection for the primary egress router such that the backup router provides routing services for the first egress router when the first egress router is not available. The primary egress router and the backup router share an anycast IP address. The backup router advertises a route to reach the primary egress router, but upon receiving a packet intended for the primary egress router, the backup router identifies the destination of the packet and forwards the packet to the destination instead of the primary egress router along a different route.

Egress protection for label switched paths

A checkpointing approach enables BGP peers to reduce the number of UPDATE messages that are exchanged and processed after a router restarts. A router receives update messages to update routing information for the one or more other devices, wherein each of the update messages includes a checkpoint marker and a route. The router stores the route in a checkpoint repository and stores the checkpoint markers in association with information identifying the other routers from which the checkpoint markers were received. In response to a restart event, the router sends each of the stored checkpoint markers to respective other devices and receives from the respective other devices only route updates that occurred later in time than the checkpoint markers.

Fast border gateway protocol synchronization

Systems and methods include providing a router that may be deployed as multiple logical routers that share a common fast interconnect. These logical routers may functionally serve as core routers, peering routers, aggregation routers, etc. A further aspect of the system and methods is that the resources assigned to a logical router are allocated from a pool potentially including multitude of hardware cards. A further aspect of the system and methods is that a logical router may be independently managed by the owner of the router or by an owner of the logical router.

Logical routers

In general, techniques are described to dynamically redefine a preference value used during route resolution. A network device, such as a router, may implement the techniques to improve a usability aspect of the router. The router may comprise an interface card that receives messages describing one or more of a plurality of routes. The router may also include a control unit that stores data defining a policy. The policy may comprise rules by which the router determines the preference value for one of the plurality of routes. The policy dynamically redefines the preference value as two or more bit fields rather than viewing the preference value as an integer value. The control unit further sets each of the two or more bit fields of the local preference value in accordance with the policy and associates the at least one of the routes with the determined local preference value.

Scalable routing policy construction using dynamic redefinition of routing preference value

Growing community of inventors

Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America

John Galen Scudder