Juniper Networks, Inc.

Pensando Systems Inc.

Loganathan Nallusamy

Krishna Doddapaneni

Sarat Kamisetty

Venkatesh Padebettu

John Cruz

Vijay Srinivasan

An orchestrator can send trace directives to network appliances that indicate a network flow to trace. The network appliances can include packet processing pipelines that each include numerous processing stages. The network appliances implement network rules for processing network flows by configuring the pipeline's processing stages to execute specific policies for specific network packets in accordance with the network rules. The processing stages can also be configured to produce metadata indicating the policies implemented at each stage to process certain network packets in network flows indicated by trace directives. The metadata can be used to produce a trace report that indicates a network packet of the network flow, a first network rule that was applied to the network packet by a one of the first appliance processing stages, and the one of the first appliance processing stages that applied the first network rule to the network packet.

Methods and systems for orchestrating network flow tracing within packet processing pipelines across multiple network appliances

Network appliances can use packet processing pipeline circuits to implement network rules for processing network packet flows by configuring the pipeline's processing stages to execute specific policies for specific network packets in accordance with the network rules. Trace reports that indicate network rules implemented at specific processing stages can be more informative than those indicating policies implemented by the processing stages. A method implemented by a network appliance can store network rules for processing network flows by the processing stages of a packet processing pipeline circuit. The method can produce a trace report in response to receiving a trace directive for one of the network flows wherein one of the processing stages has applied a network rule to a network packet in one of the network flows. The trace report can indicate the network rule in association with the processing stage and the network flow.

Methods and systems for network flow tracing within a packet processing pipeline

An Access Gateway Function (AGF) node can receive requests to join a multicast stream from a computing device. If the request is the first request to join the multicast stream, the AGF can forward the request to the UPF node. The multicast stream is then received via a tunnel between the AGF node and UPF node that is associated with the computing device. The tunnel associated with the first computing device to request joining the multicast stream can be a primary tunnel for the multicast stream. Subsequent requests to join the same multicast stream can cause the AGF node add tunnels associated with the requesting computing devices as secondary tunnels. The multicast stream is received via the primary tunnel and replicated to computing devices associated with the secondary tunnels. A secondary tunnel may be promoted to a primary tunnel in response to a failure or disconnection of the primary tunnel.

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Bengaluru, India

Loganathan Nallusamy