Cisco Technology, Inc.

Arista Networks, Inc.

Satish Mahadevan

Balaji Sundararajan

Ramakumara Kariyappa

Samir D Thoria

Laxmikantha Reddy Ponnuru

Sourav Sen

Vivek Agarwal

Pritam Baruah

Ankur Bhargava

Hamzah Kardame

Basavaraju Halappa

Bhairav Dutia

Prosenjit Sarkar

Nithin Bangalore Raju

Ravi Kiran Chintallapudi

Arul Murugan Manickam

Jean-Marc Barozet

Tahir Ali

Alfred C Lindem, Iii

Biju Mathews Mammen

Ajeet Pal Singh Gill

Giorgio Valentini

Venkatraman Venkatapathy

Ganesh Devendrachar

Matthieu Loriol

Sheikh Qumruzzaman

Keon Vafai

Rahul Hardikar

Avinash Shah

Mahendra Kumar Samarya

Madhusudan V Gindi

Mrigendra Singh Patel

Arsalan Arsalan

Srinivas Yalamanchali

Sampath Sthothra Bhasham

Thomas Giarratana

Deepa Rajendra Sangolli

Kyle Gonsalves

Srinivas Yalamanchanli

Ziad Sarieddine

Nikolai Pitaev

Techniques for symmetric routing in a software-defined wide area network (SDWAN) are disclosed herein. In some aspects, the techniques described herein relate to a method including: determining a first device group, wherein the first device group includes a first router associated with a branch tag and a second router associated with a hub tag; determining a second device group, wherein the second device group includes a third router associated with and a fourth router associated with the hub tag; transmitting a first route advertisement associated with a first route from the first router to the second router to the first router; transmitting a second route advertisement associated with a second route from the first router to the third router to the first router; and preventing transmission of a third route advertisement associated with a third route from the first router to the fourth router to the first router.

Achieving symmetric routing using intent-based smart device groupings in a Software-Defined Wide Area Network

The present technology intelligently selects routes to be distributed to edge network device from SD-WAN controllers. Rather than indiscriminately distributing routes, the present technology utilizes logic to account for route viability conditions to determine whether a route between a first edge network device and a second edge network device is likely to be usable between the edge network devices.

Intelligent route selection and distribution in SD-WAN routing controllers based on peer's transport characteristics

Techniques are described for routing traffic through an interconnect cloud gateway based on cloud traffic routing indicators. The interconnect cloud gateway can advertise the cloud traffic routing indicators, which can include cloud indicators and transport gateway indicators. The cloud indicators can include cloud tags utilized to route cloud traffic. The transport gateway indicators can include transport gateway flags utilized to identify private networks utilized to route the cloud traffic. The cloud traffic can routed during normal private network operation through private networks, which can be dynamically replaced by public networks due to occurrences of failures preventing the data traffic from being routed through the private networks and to cloud networks.

Application acceleration on cloud networks

This disclosure describes techniques and mechanisms for utilizing affinity routing in SDWAN networks. The techniques may enable network administrators to assign and/or configure affinity numbers to hub(s) and/or gateway(s), tunneling interface(s), service(s), etc., as well as affinity-preference-order(s) to edge device(s) within the network. Network administrators may also configure control polic(ies). The techniques enable a scalable and simplified way to automatically load-balance traffic across different gateways within a network, while reducing network resource usage. The techniques may utilize routing affinity to achieve a variety of networking related functionalities, including automatic load-balancing of traffic, provisioning of active and backup gateways, optimal route distribution to routers from routing controllers, optimized service placement for edge routers, without the need for any policy configuration at all, let alone complex policies.

Router affinity in software defined wide area network(s)

Present disclosure includes determining, at two or more gateway nodes that each communicate with a plurality of branch nodes and a plurality of resources, dynamically a path between each of the plurality of branch nodes and each of the plurality of resources, wherein the path includes one or more virtual routers; generating, at the two or more gateways, dynamically a path length based upon a number of virtual routers each path traverses; automatically translating the path length to an overlay management protocol route preference for each of the plurality of resources.

Systems and methods for optimizing access to cloud resources using preferential localization

Symmetric networking techniques disclosed herein can be applied by gateway routers in cloud networks. The techniques can ensure that both outbound traffic received at a cloud from a branch device and return traffic directed from the cloud back to the branch device are processed by a same gateway router. The gateway router can use network address translation to insert IP addresses from an inside pool and an outside pool assigned to the router.

Symmetric networking for orphan workloads in cloud networks

Techniques for enabling service insertion using dynamic service path selection are described herein. In some aspects, the techniques described herein relate to avoiding a service route that passes through a service router when the second-leg path from the service router to a destination router is unreachable. In some cases, the techniques described herein relate to avoiding a route that includes a service router that does not have a path to a viable target in a core service region.

Service insertion in a computer network using dynamic service path selection

Systems and methods are provided for re-balancing and healing of an SD-WAN in an unbalanced state and/or experiencing one or more failure states. In response to a request to connect to a new controller resulting from OMP load shedding from a first controller, the system can identify other controllers capable of handling the load requirements of the edge router. The system can incorporate the controller group preference of the edge router and select a second controller based on the identified other controllers and within the preferred controller group. If not possible, the system can temporarily assign the edge router to non-preferred controller groups and move them back to controllers in the preferred controller group once it becomes viable. The system further enhances OMP graceful restart (GR) logic to incorporate the load shedding effect and avoid unnecessary route retention that GR entails.

Self-healing SD-WAN controllers and networks

A process can include determining a plurality of Network Address Translation (NAT) routes associated with respective edge routers included in a same virtual private network (VPN) for communicating with a software-defined wide area network (SDWAN). A process can include identifying a first subset of the plurality of NAT routes as mapped to a first public NAT address included in a NAT pool associated with the VPN. A process can include tagging each NAT route of the first subset with a tag value indicative of a preferred router for receiving return traffic of the respective NAT route. A process can include routing traffic on a respective NAT route of the plurality of NAT routes based on applying, at an SDWAN controller, a corresponding control policy matching the tag value of the respective NAT route.

NAT route distribution based on tag information in an SDWAN overlay network

Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and computer-readable media for upgrading vSmart controllers. In one aspect, a method includes an edge router receiving a notification from a vSmart controller that an upgrade to the controller will occur. The notification can be dynamically triggered by a centralized network management system. In some embodiments, the vSmart controller can run as a virtual machine (VM) and maintains a control plane connection with one or more edge routers in an overlay network. In response to the notification, a length of time of an expiry timer in which the edge router attempts to connect to the vSmart controller can be increased, and the edge router can connect to the vSmart controller once the increased length of time has passed.

Minimizing network disruption via graceful upgrade of routing controllers

Techniques are described for suppressing data plane traffic using a service monitoring policy for data plane control. If a service provided to a router becomes nonfunctional, preventing the router from being able to forward traffic to a next-hop device, data plane traffic from client devices on the data plane that requires the use of the nonfunctioning service is suppressed. Additionally, new communication pathways to the router that will use the nonfunctioning service are prevented from being established. Traffic is redirected to another router with a functioning service. Thus, traffic that may normally be directed to the router with the nonfunctioning service and not able to be forwarded (e.g., blackholing of data) can be forwarded to the other router.

Service access awareness in a distributed architecture

Techniques for ensuring symmetric forwarding between disparate networks. The techniques may include receiving a gateway preference order associated with a route advertised by an edge node, the edge node associated with a first network. The techniques may also include determining, based at least in part on the gateway preference order, that a gateway node is a more preferred gateway for the route than another gateway node, the gateway node configured to facilitate communications between the first network and a second network. In some examples, the techniques may also include converting the gateway preference order into a metric associated with an IP routing protocol that is in use in the second network. In some examples, the route including the metric may be distributed within the second network such that the gateway node is the more preferred gateway for return traffic of the route.

Symmetric routing in software-defined networks

This disclosure describes techniques and mechanisms for disclosure describes techniques and mechanisms for a central management plane to automatically create and assign system identifiers to network devices, thereby creating a global network hierarchy within a network. The techniques enable the use of a system identifier to be automatically generated and assigned, as well as configuration and network policies to be automatically generated based on the system identifier. Accordingly, the techniques enable automation of regional connectivity and policy application, a simplified manner of troubleshooting/debugging of any connectivity issues, and a simplified, aggregated view of statistic and analytics related to problems at site, sub-region, and region levels.

Network hierarchy constructs enabling instant global wide area network connectivity

According to some embodiments, a software defined wide area network (SD-WAN) includes a first region and a second region. The first region includes multiple first routing controllers and multiple first SD-WAN edge routers. The second region includes multiple second routing controllers and multiple second SD-WAN edge routers. Each first SD-WAN edge router of the first region is configured to establish Overlay Management Protocol (OMP) peering connections with the plurality of first routing controllers of the first region but to avoid establishing OMP peering connections with the plurality of second routing controllers of the second region. Each second SD-WAN edge router of the second region is configured to establish OMP peering connections with the plurality of second routing controllers of the second region but to avoid establishing OMP peering connections with the plurality of first routing controllers of the first region.

Distributed routing controllers for multi-region SDWAN

Growing community of inventors

San Ramon, CA, United States of America

Satish Mahadevan