Extreme Networks, Inc.

Dell Products Inc.

Prakash Kashyap

Arun Sarat Yerra

Thanh X Nguyen

Ram Krishnan

Boon Ling Chew

Craig T Elrod

Donald Bruce Grosser, Jr

David K Parker

Sunil Praful Shah

Xuguang Yang

Arnel Lim

Mike Yip

Kesavan Thiruvenkatasamy

Joel Aller

Padmavathi V Uppalapatti

Joydeep Chakravarti

Jim Pan

Ki-Hong Park

Manpreet S Sandhu

A system and method for base topology selection includes a network controller including a control unit and one or more ports coupled to the control unit and configured to couple the network controller to one or more network switching devices of a network. The network controller is configured to receive initiation messages from the network switching devices, receive configuration and status messages from the network switching devices, transmit discovery requests to the network switching devices, receive discovery responses from the network switching devices, determine a network topology of the network based on information associated with the initiation messages, the configuration and status messages, and the discovery responses, apply heuristic rules to the network topology, and select a base topology based on results of the applied heuristic rules. The network controller may further be configured to transmit flow control messages to the network switching devices to provision the network consistent with the selected base topology.

System and method for base topology selection

A system and method for network topology management includes a network controller having a control unit one or more ports coupled to the control unit and configured to couple the network controller to a plurality of switches in a network, and a memory coupled to the control unit and configured to store a topology of the switches. The topology includes a plurality of switch groups. The network controller is configured to assign a topology management module to each of the switch groups, receive a message from a switch indicating a topology change, determine when the topology change is a network link failure between switches within a first switch group that the network link failure is internal to the first switch group, and handle the network link failure when the network link failure is internal to the first switch group using the topology management module assigned to the first switch group.

System and method for network topology management

A system and method for data structure synchronization includes a control unit and a memory coupled to the control unit. The memory stores a first base data structure and a first digest data structure. The control unit maintains the first digest data structure based on the first base data structure and determines whether the first base data structure is in synchronization with a second base data structure. When the first and second base data structures are not in synchronization, the control unit receives a second digest data structure based on the second base data structure, attempts to synchronize the first base data structure to the second base data structure based on differences between the first and second digest data structures, and receives the second base data structure from the second computing device and replaces the first base data structure with the second base data structure when the attempt is not successful.

System and method for data structure synchronization

A system and method for network topology management includes a network controller having a control unit and one or more ports coupled to the control unit and configured to couple the network controller to one or more switches of a network. The network controller is configured to divide a physical topology of the network into a plurality of switch subgroups, determine one or more abstracted switch groups for each switch subgroup, select a base topology for each abstracted switch group, configure the each abstracted switch group with a corresponding first forwarding strategy consistent with each selected base topology, determine an abstracted topology for the network based on the physical topology and the each abstracted switch group, and configure the abstracted topology with a second forwarding strategy consistent with the abstracted topology. In some embodiments, the network controller is further configured to monitor the network to determine when a topology change occurs.

On-switch methods for enforcing a policy relating to one or more network switch resources, for detecting and mitigating a network anomaly, and for selectively filtering packets to an externally-accessible port, are provided. The methods may each be embodied as one or more rules held by one or more processor readable media, with one or more of the rules defining one or more conditions to be met by one or more usage-derived packet statistics, and one or more actions to be performed if the one or more conditions are met.

Integrated methods of performing network switch functions

A network switch automatically detects undesired network traffic and mirrors the undesired traffic to a security management device. The security management device determines the source of the undesired traffic and redirects traffic from the source to itself. The security management device also automatically sends a policy to a switch to block traffic from the source.

Network threat detection and mitigation

In response to a network topology change, packets are initially flooded on ports of a network device. In addition, a bit array is cleared in response to the topology change. Each bit in the bit array is associated with a particular forwarding entry on the network device. In connection with the clearing of the bit array, the flooding of packets on ports of the network device is made conditional, reducing failover time of the network.

Network convergence in response to a topology change

A ring network with an automatic protection switching domain includes a control VLAN and at least one data VLAN. A master node in the ring is connected to at least one transit node. Each node in the ring network is linked to an adjacent node by a primary port or a secondary port. The master node receives notification of a fault via the control VLAN, the fault indicating a failed link between adjacent nodes. In response, the master node unblocks its secondary port to traffic on the data VLAN(s). The forwarding database entries on the master node and on the transit node(s) are flushed. Data traffic is flooded to the ring network until forwarding database entries on the master node and on the transit node(s) have been reestablished.

Reducing traffic loss in an EAPS system

A data packet is received at a network switch. The packet has a destination address that is reached via a Link Aggregation group on a virtual local area network (VLAN). A forwarding database lookup is performed to determine a Link Aggregation port reference number for the data packet on the VLAN. A Link Aggregation port table is then searched to determine the primary Link Aggregation port and a backup Link Aggregation port for forwarding the packet. A port array for ports in the Link Aggregation group is searched to determine if the primary Link Aggregation port is valid. If the primary port is valid, then the packet is forwarded on the primary Link Aggregation port. If the primary port is not valid, then the packet is forwarded on the backup Link Aggregation port.

Traffic forwarding in a traffic-engineered link aggregation group

A multicast data packet sent from a source node is received by a transit node. The multicast data packet includes a source address and a multicast group address. A hardware cache miss is detected at the transit node for the multicast data packet. The multicast data packet is hardware-flooded onto ports of the network. The flooding consists of forwarding a copy of the multicast data packet to neighbor nodes of the transit node based on virtual local area network (VLAN) membership. A cache-miss copy of the multicast data packet is sent to an out-of-line processing unit where it is processed in software. The processing includes establishing, via a hardware abstraction layer, a hardware cache entry for the multicast data packet. The cache-miss copy is not forwarded onto the network.

Convergence of multicast traffic

One or more rules for performing one or more network switch functions, the one or more rules conforming to an improved rule structure, are provided. The improved rule structure comprises a first specification defining one or more conditions to be met, the one or more conditions comprising or including one or more conditions to be met by one or more usage-derived packet statistics, and a second specification defining one or more actions to be taken by the network switch if the one or more specified conditions are met.

Rule structure for performing network switch functions

A method and system is provided for inter-domain loop protection using a hierarchy of loop resolving protocols. The method includes receiving messages from inter-domain switches. The inter-domain switches belong to a plurality of loop-free network topology domains. A logical domain is abstracted that includes the inter-domain switches and logical links that connect the switches. Each logical link represents one of the physical loop free network topology domains that the inter-domain switches belong to. Then, the loops in the logical domain are eliminated. One or more logical links and ports associated with those logical links may be blocked to break the loops. This provides for a network free of inter-domain loops.

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Prakash Kashyap