Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

Mingfei Peng

Jayant Jain

Brian Russell Kean

Mohit Sahni

Aditya Srinivasa Ivaturi

Shu Lin

Srivatsan Rajagopal

Hao Long

Thomas Arthur Warburton

Uttam Ramesh

Harieasswar Lakshmidevi

Jacob Rameen Chitsaz

Harish Kumar Lohar

Techniques for wildcard based private application access are disclosed. In some embodiments, a system, a process, and/or a computer program product for wildcard based private application access includes receiving a request for access to an application over a secure access service edge (SASE) network for a user associated with an enterprise; determining if the request for access to the application matches a wildcard (e.g., the wildcard can be configured by an administrator of the enterprise for matching a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for the application); and automatically configuring access information (e.g., IP address, protocol, and destination port) for the application that matches the wildcard.

Wildcard based private application access

Anycast addressing is utilized to support the connection of multiple application connectors fronting an application(s) to a network element and anycast routing of network traffic destined for the application(s). When an application is indicated for onboarding in a tenant's network fabric, a network controller allocates virtual and anycast addresses to the application. Allocation of anycast addresses is per domain name and port/protocol combination. Upon determining that the application is available, the application connector(s) advertises reachability of the application via the anycast address. The network controller orchestrates configuration of a domain name system entry that resolves the application name to its virtual Internet Protocol (IP) address and destination network address translation rules that translate the virtual IP address to the anycast address and the anycast address to the application's private IP address. Application network traffic can thus be forwarded to the application via any application connector that advertised the anycast address.

Configuring application availability using anycast addressing

A network controller communicates a wildcard domain name defined by a tenant and IP addresses of data centers for which a tenant has configured that wildcard to network elements of a network fabric through which the data centers are accessible. Each network element creates a rule to forward DNS requests with FQDNs that match the wildcard to each data center IP address. When a network element receives a DNS request indicating a FQDN that matches the wildcard, the network element forwards the DNS request to each data center IP address. Each data center element associated with one of the IP addresses receives the DNS request and determines if the FQDN can be resolved to an IP address in that data center. Data center elements for which domain name resolution is successful notify the network controller, which onboards the resource corresponding to the FQDN in that data center.

Multiple data center compatible deployment of applications matching a wildcard domain name

A controller can securely publish an application of a tenant by securely extending a network fabric into the networks of the tenant with virtual private networks and NAT. After a tenant deploys an application into one or more networks of the tenant, the tenant can indicate select applications to publish. The network controller assigns a network address from the routable address space of the network fabric to the application and a network address aggregate to each application connector that will front an instance of the application, which securely extends the network fabric into the tenant network. The network controller configures NAT rules in the network fabric and on the application connector to create a route for traffic of the application through the network fabric to the application instance using a fully qualified domain name assigned to the application without exposing a private network address of the application instance and preserving security of other resource on the tenant network.

Securely publishing applications from private networks

Techniques for providing a networking and security split architecture are disclosed. In some embodiments, a system, process, and/or computer program product for providing a networking and security split architecture includes receiving a flow at a security service; processing the flow at a network layer of the security service to perform one or more networking functions; and offloading the flow to a security layer of the security service to perform security enforcement based on a policy.

Growing community of inventors

Pleasanton, CA, United States of America

Mingfei Peng