Cisco Technology, Inc.

Xiaorong Wang

Hongbo Xia

Yicheng Liu

Changhong Shen

Lianxiang Wang

Jianda Liu

Yu Zhang

Gaofeng Tao

Ijsbrand Wijnands

Fang Yang

Pritam Baruah

Dapeng Liu

Pan Wu

Ruchir Jain

Hunan Cao

Shen Yong Qing

Olivier Patrick Jean Pelerin

Frederic René Philippe Detienne

Bin Shi

Zhiyong Fang

Pu Duan

Jiayi You

Yunpeng Zhang

Xiangyu Ji

Wei Zhou

In one embodiment, a method includes determining, by a first network component, a sender shaper drop value based on the following: a maximum sequence number; a minimum sequence number; and a sender sequence counter number associated with the first network component. The method also includes determining, by the first network component, a wide area network (WAN) link drop value based on the sender sequence counter number associated with the first network component and a receiver sequence counter number associated with a second network component. The method further includes determining, by the first network component, whether to adjust a sender shaper rate based on the sender shaper drop value and the WAN link drop value.

Systems and methods for adapting a WAN egress shaper rate

This disclosure describes techniques and mechanisms for intelligently sampling packet flows within a network. The techniques enable the sampling of a limited set of packet flows that show greatest amount of information about the network from the packet flows in order to provide the greatest insight on application performance, network packet, and critical events within the network. Additionally, the techniques provide configurable parameters, such that the techniques are customizable for each user's network.

Packet flow sampling in network monitoring

According to an embodiment, a node comprises one or more processors operable to execute instructions to cause the node to perform operations that comprise receiving a packet from a first node associated with an SD-WAN domain. The packet comprises a header indicating a TLOC associated with a second node to send the packet, the second node associated with an SR domain. The operations comprise determining that the TLOC corresponds to a virtual TLOC used in the SD-WAN domain to identify the second node that is in the SR domain and, in response, determining a second node identifier used in the SR domain to identify the second node. The operations further comprise preparing the packet to be communicated via the SR domain. Preparing the packet comprises including the second node identifier in the packet. The operations further comprise sending the packet comprising the second node identifier to the second node.

Inter-working of a software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) domain and a segment routing (SR) domain

Techniques and architecture are described grouping various sources of traffic within a network into grouping fields and assigning each combination of grouping field values an aggregate identification (ID). A first hop edge router may receive a packet and search a mapping table for a corresponding aggregate ID for the combination of grouping field values within the mapping table. If not found, the first hop edge router may assign a corresponding aggregate ID for the combination of grouping field values and store the new aggregate ID for the combination of grouping field values in the mapping table. The first hop edge router may forward the packet on through the network with the aggregate ID embedded in metadata. Routers within the network may measure and aggregate flow metrics of the packet within the network based on the aggregate ID and provide the measurements to the network controller.

Dynamic aggregate ID based flow metrics aggregation

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, by a network orchestrator, trace parameters from a user device. The method also includes determining, by the network orchestrator, to initiate a network path trace for the application, generating, by the network orchestrator, a filter policy for the network path trace using the trace parameters, and allocating, by the network orchestrator, a trace identification to the network path trace. The method also includes initiating, by the network orchestrator, the network path trace within a network by communicating the filter policy and the trace identification to a first node of the network and receiving, by the network orchestrator, network path trace data from a plurality of nodes of the network. The method further includes generating, by the network orchestrator, a trace report for the application using the network path trace data.

Systems and methods for determining a network path trace

Systems and methods provide for enabling multicast-based performance routing and policy controls for software-defined networking in a wide area network deployment including a multicast application-route policy based on sources, groups, receivers, dynamic application-route policy path selection from multicast replicators, and application-route SLA switchover across paths and multicast replicators based on SD-WAN multicast routing architecture; and dynamically selecting SD-WAN multicast replicators based on policies for replication including allowed multicast groups, geographic location, bandwidth indications, system load, and performance, and switching over dynamically across multicast replicators based real-time multicast replicator status updates.

Multicast performance routing and policy control in software defined wide area networks

According to some embodiments, a method performed by a software defined wide area network (SD-WAN) controller in a SD-WAN network comprising a plurality of aggregation edge routers and a plurality of branch edge routers comprises the following steps. The method comprises: receiving, from each of the plurality of branch edge routers, a transmit location (TLOC) publication comprising a quality of service (QoS) attribute of one or more TLOCs configured on the branch edge router; determining a QoS policy based on the received TLOC publications; transmitting the QoS policy to the plurality of aggregation edge routers; receiving, from a branch edge router of the plurality of branch edge routers, a first congestion indication indicating that bandwidth utilization on a wide area network (WAN) interface of the branch edge router exceeds a first threshold; determining an updated QoS policy based on the received TLOC publications and the first congestion indication to reduce congestion at the branch edge router; and transmitting the updated QoS policy to the plurality of aggregation edge routers.

Congestion avoidance with adaptive QoS policy enforcement from SD-WAN controller in SD-WAN networks

Methods and network devices are disclosed for multicast traffic steering in a communications network. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, at a node in a network, a multicast message comprising an incoming message bit array and a tree identifier value. The embodiment further includes selecting a bit indexed forwarding table stored at the node and corresponding to the tree identifier value, accessing within the selected forwarding table an entry corresponding to an intended destination node for the message, and forwarding, to a neighboring node identified in the accessed entry, a copy of the message comprising a forwarded message bit array in place of the incoming message bit array. An embodiment of a network device includes one or more network interfaces and a processor adapted to perform steps of the method.

Multicast traffic steering using tree identity in bit indexed explicit replication (BIER)

Methods and network devices are disclosed for multicast traffic steering in a communications network. In one embodiment, a method includes generating a first tree connecting a source node for a multicast flow through a communications network to each of multiple destination nodes for the multicast flow. The communications network is configured to forward a multicast message based on bit values in a message bit array carried by the message, and the first tree comprises a first set of unicast paths from the source node to the destination nodes. The method further includes allocating a first tree identifier to the first tree and communicating the first tree identifier and associated forwarding information to each of multiple forwarding nodes within the communications network. An embodiment of a network device includes a processor operably coupled to one or more network interfaces and adapted to perform steps of the method.

Methods and network devices are disclosed for internet protocol (IP) based encapsulation in bit indexed explicit replication (BIER) forwarding. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving a multicast message comprising an inner IP header, an intervening header, and an outer IP header. The embodiment further includes accessing a message bit array stored in the intervening header, retrieving an IP address from an entry in a bit indexed forwarding table, replacing an IP destination address in the outer IP header of a copy of the multicast message with the retrieved IP address, and sending the copy of the multicast message toward a second node in the network, where the retrieved IP address is assigned to the second node. An embodiment of a network device includes a processor operably coupled to a plurality of storage locations and to one or more network interfaces and adapted to perform steps of the method.

Internet protocol based encapsulation for bit indexed explicit replication (BIER)

In an example, a server architecture is described for a dynamic cascaded node chain providing a resource cluster. The cascaded node chain may include one or more resource instances provisioned as a head node, zero or more middle nodes, and a tail node. Each node may include a discrete number of available resource entries in a flow table. As traffic enters the head node, each node attempts to match the traffic to an entry in its flow table. If no match is found, the packet is downlinked to the next node in the chain. If the packet reaches the tail node without a match, it is punted to the controller. The controller may then provision a matching entry if an entry is available. If not, the controller may spawn a new resource instance. When the full capacity of the cluster is reached, non-matching entries may be dropped.

Growing community of inventors

Shanghai, China

Xiaorong Wang