Cisco Technology, Inc.

Muralidhar Annabatula

Umamaheswararao Karyampudi

Murukanandam Kamalam Panchalingam

Junyun Li

Thomas James Edsall

Ronak K Desai

Darpan R Kathoke

Azeem Suleman

Madhuryamayi Mani

Chong M Tan

Murukanandam K Panchalingam

A distributed policy proxy system offloads network policy processing from an overloaded network element to policy proxy network elements. A network controller detects that policy resources are overloaded at a network element, and assigns a range of endpoints to each policy proxy network element. Each policy proxy network element is assigned to handle policy processing for traffic belonging to a corresponding assigned range of endpoints. The network controller provides instructions to the policy proxy network elements to enable each policy proxy network element to apply the network policy for its assigned range of endpoints. The network controller also provides instructions to the overloaded network element to redirect a packet from the first endpoint to a first policy proxy network element based on a destination of the packet.

Distributed policy enforcement proxy with dynamic EPG sharding

Techniques for generating and enforcing whitelist security policies in a communication network are disclosed. A first plurality of whitelist policies are consolidated into a second plurality of whitelist policies based on populating a plurality of tables. The populated tables include a first table including pairs of endpoints and associating each pair of endpoints with a service identifier, and a second table associating the service identifiers with the policy identifiers. The second plurality of whitelist policies are programmed into a network device in the communication network, based on at least one of the plurality of tables. Rules governing traffic between the pair of endpoints are enforced, at the network device, using the programmed second plurality of whitelist policies.

Policy consolidation for auto-orchestrated data centers

A distributed policy proxy system offloads network policy processing from an overloaded network element to policy proxy network elements. A network controller detects that policy resources are overloaded at a network element, and selects a group of policy proxy network elements. The network controller assigns an exclusive range of endpoint groups to each policy proxy network element. Each policy proxy network element is assigned to handle policy processing for its assigned range of endpoint groups. The network controller provides instructions to the policy proxy network elements to enable each policy proxy network element to apply the network policy for its assigned range of endpoint groups. The network controller also provides instructions to the overloaded network element to redirect a packet from the first endpoint group to a first policy proxy network element based on a destination of the packet.

The present disclosure provides for application-centric enforcement for multi-tenant workloads with multi-site data center fabrics by: receiving, at a local switch at a first site, a packet from a first host at the first site intended for a second host located at a second site; identifying class identifiers (ID) for the hosts; determining, based on the class IDs, a security policy for transmitting data between the hosts; in response to determining that the security policy indicates that the second site exclusively manages security policies for the hosts' network: setting a policy applied indicator on the packet indicating that enforcement of the security policy is delegated from the first switch to a second switch connected to the second host; including the class IDs in the packet; and transmitting the packet to the second site.

Growing community of inventors

Dublin, CA, United States of America

Muralidhar Annabatula