Barefoot Networks, Inc.

Pensando Systems Inc.

Parag Dattatraya Bhide

Chaitanya Kodeboyina

Anurag Agrawal

Alain Loge

Changhoon Kim

Jeongkeun Lee

Xiaozhou Li

Georgios Nikolaidis

Milad Sharif

Vasanth Kumar

Jithin Thomas

Krishna Doddapaneni

Sarat Kamisetty

Barun Halder

Rohan Sikdar

Ratnananda Ganesh Dontula Venkata

Prabu Thayalan

Described are method, devices, and systems for establishing a forwarding state for a data flow in a provided datapath by receiving a packet from the data flow that is not installed in the datapath; allocating a flow queue for the data flow; processing the packet to determine a flow entry for the data flow; queueing any subsequently received packets from the data flow to the flow queue until the flow entry is set to the forwarding state; reinjecting the packet into the datapath; dequeuing the flow queue to reinject each of the subsequently received packets into the datapath; forwarding the packet and each of the subsequently received packets to a port associated with the data flow; and updating the flow entry to the forwarding state once the flow queue is emptied.

Systems and methods to prevent packet reordering when establishing a flow entry

Described are edge devices configured to perform operations to migrate a workload. These operations comprise: receiving a migration trigger comprising an indication of a migration of a workload from a source edge device; establishing a secure communication channel with the source edge device; receiving a network state for the workload from the source edge device; quiescing a datapath for processing flows associated with the workload; receiving incremental deltas comprising changes to the network state from the source edge device; updating the datapath for processing flows associated with the workload based on the received incremental changes; providing, to the source edge device, a request for a final synchronization; receiving, from the source edge device, a final synchronization delta comprising incremental information for the network state as modified since the most recently received incremental change; and removing the quiescing of the datapath to facilitate use of the network state.

Network state synchronization for workload migrations in edge devices

Some embodiments provide a method for a hardware forwarding element. Based on a set of characteristics of a packet, the method determines to copy a packet to a particular temporary storage of a set of temporary storages of the hardware forwarding element. Based on a property of the particular temporary storage, the method stores only a particular portion of the packet in the particular temporary storage. A same size portion of each packet copied to the particular temporary storage is stored in the particular temporary storage.

Storing packet data in mirror buffer

A method of forwarding packets by a physical network switch is provided. The method assigns egress ports that connect the network switch to each particular next hop to a weighted-cost multipathing (WCMP) group associated with the particular next hop. The method assigns weights to each egress port in each WCMP group according to the capacity of each path that connects the egress port to the next hop associated with the WCMP group and normalizes the weights over a range of values. For each packet received at the network switch, the method identifies the WCMP group associated with a next hop destination of the packet. The method calculates a hash value of a set of fields in the packet header and uses the hash value to perform a range lookup in the identified WCMP group to select an egress port for forwarding the packet to the next hop.

Weighted-cost multi-pathing using range lookups

Some embodiments of the invention provide a path-and-latency tracking (PLT) method. At a forwarding element, this method in some embodiments detects the path traversed by a data message through a set of forwarding elements, and the latency that the data message experiences at each of the forwarding elements in the path. In some embodiments, the method has a forwarding element in the path insert its forwarding element identifier and path latency in a header of the data message that it forwards. The method of some embodiments also uses fast PLT operators in the data plane of the forwarding elements to detect new data message flows, to gather PLT data from these data message flows, and to detect path or latency changes for previously detected data message flows. In some embodiments, the method then uses control plane processes (e.g., of the forwarding elements or other devices) to collect and analyze the PLT data gathered in the data plane from new or existing flows.

Latency tracking

Path and latency tracking

Growing community of inventors

San Ramon, CA, United States of America

Parag Dattatraya Bhide