Cisco Technology, Inc.

Juniper Networks, Inc.

Lester Bird

Paul Mattes

Chandrashekhar Appanna

Anantha Ramaiah

Vinay K Nallamothu

Zhenghui Cai

Ruchi D Kapoor

Siva Yaragalla

The disclosure describes techniques for concurrently operating multiple network stacks, one operating natively and one operating remotely, to control the routing table within a router of a network. An example network device includes a control unit comprising one or more processors. A native routing stack executes on the control unit to exchange routing protocol advertisements with a peer network device in accordance with a routing protocol. The native routing stack is configured to insert first routing entries into a routing table. The first routing entries are based on the routing protocol advertisements. A controller interface executed by the control unit receives second routing entries from a network controller and inserts the second routing entries into the routing table. A routing process generates a forwarding table based on the first and second routing entries.

Concurrent routing for network devices

A system and method for routing packets within a router having a plurality of loosely-coupled route processors, including a first route processor, and a line card operably coupled to the plurality of distributed-route-processors. Each route processor includes an internal forwarding information base (IFIB). Each IFIB includes information that is used to route packets addressed to elements within the router.

System and method for local packet transport services within distributed routers

A system and method for performing stateful switchover with reduced data, such as only metadata about a TCP window state. The metadata comprises a size of TCP packets used to send BGP messages, and which of those have been acknowledged by a neighbor networking device. The networking device comprises a BGP module to establish a BGP session between the networking device and a neighbor networking device. An active transport module within the networking device synchronizes with a standby transport module within the networking device by sending the metadata. A fault detector within the networking device initiates a stateful switchover from the active transport module to the standby transport module responsive to detecting a failure of a process and/or processor. The standby transport module uses the metadata to determine stateful metadata for preserving current BGP and TCP sessions of the networking device.

Cooperative TCP / BGP window management for stateful switchover

A method and apparatus is disclosed for graceful restart in a multi-process operating system. A transport protocol process, which is capable of restarting independently from the operating system, is executed in a network element. The network element executes a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) process, which installs one or more routes in a global Routing Information Base (RIB). When the BGP process detects that the transport protocol process has become unavailable, the BGP process keeps the one or more routes in the global RIB even though the transport protocol process is not available.

Techniques for graceful restart in a multi-process operating system

A system and method for performing stateful switchover with reduced data, such as only metadata about a TCP window state. The metadata comprises a size of TCP packets used to send BGP messages, and which of those have been acknowledged by a neighbor networking device. The networking device comprises a BGP module to establish a BGP session between the networking device and a neighbor networking device. An active transport module within the networking device synchronizes with a standby transport module within the networking device by sending the metadata. A fault detector within the networking device initiates a stateful switchover from the active transport module to the standby transport module responsive to detecting a failure of a process and/or processor. The standby transport module uses the metadata to determine stateful metadata for preserving current BGP and TCP sessions of the networking device with dummy TCP packets having the same size ad sent TCP packets and containing safe BGP message data.

Growing community of inventors

Tracy, CA, United States of America

Lester Bird