Gigamon Inc.

Yan Xiu

Zbigniew Sufleta

Ramakrishna Manchiraju-Venkata

Yingchun Ma

Tanmay Kishore

Hung Phi Nguyen

Hung Chuen Jason Lee

Jason Lee

Sitti Amarittapark

A packet broker deployed in a visibility fabric may intelligently assign identifiers to data packets that are routed through sequences of one or more network tools for monitoring and/or security purposes. Guiding techniques based on these identifiers offer flexible support for multiple network tool operational modes. For example, the packet broker may be able to readily address changes in the state of a network tool connected to the packet broker by modifying certain egress translation schemes and/or ingress translation schemes. The 'state' of a network tool can be 'up' (i.e., ready for service) or &#x201c;down&#x201d; (i.e., out of service) based on, for example, the network tool's ability to pass through health-probing data packets dispatched by the packet broker.

Status monitoring of inline network tools

A packet broker deployed in a visibility fabric may intelligently assign identifiers to data packets that are routed through sequences of one or more network tools for monitoring and/or security purposes. Guiding techniques based on these identifiers offer flexible support for multiple network tool operational modes. For example, the packet broker may be able to readily address changes in the state of a network tool connected to the packet broker by modifying certain egress translation schemes and/or ingress translation schemes. The 'state' of a network tool can be 'up' (i.e., ready for service) or 'down' (i.e., out of service) based on, for example, the network tool's ability to pass through health-probing data packets dispatched by the packet broker.

A packet broker deployed in a visibility fabric may intelligently assign identifiers to data packets that are routed through sequences of one or more network tools for monitoring and/or security purposes. However, in some instances, it may be desirable for data packets the one or more network tools in a load-balanced manner rather than a cascaded manner. Accordingly, the packet broker may initially form a trunk group (i.e., a predefined group of ports that are treated as one port) based on input provided by an administrator. A group of network tools that share a load (i.e., a traffic flow) through trunking facilitated by the packet broker are referred to as a 'trunk group' of network tools.

Statistical multiplexing of inline network tools

A packet broker deployed in a visibility fabric may intelligently assign identifiers to data packets that are routed through sequences of one or more network tools for monitoring and/or security purposes. More specifically, the packet broker may apply packet-matching criteria to incoming data packets to determine a predetermined sequence of network tools through which the data packets are to be guided. For example, the packet broker may guide a data packet through a predetermined sequence of network tools by translating an internal identifier added to the data packet to an external identifier before transmission to each of the network tools, and translating the external identifier to a different internal identifier each time the data packet is received from each of the network tools.

Flexible inline arrangements for guiding traffic through network tools

Embodiments are disclosed for monitoring the performance of an in-line tool without adding data to network traffic routed through the in-line tool. In some embodiments, performance of the in-line tool is based on a measured latency introduced by the processing of packets through the in-line tool. In some embodiments, network traffic is adaptively routed based on the measured latency at the in-line tool.

In-line tool performance monitoring and adaptive packet routing

Introduced herein is a technology for a network switch device to route network packets through a inline tool, without introducing additional information to the network packets. The technology records an association between an input network port and a signature (e.g., source MAC address) of the network packet, before forwarding the packet to the inline tool. When receiving the packet back from the inline tool, the network device recognizes that the packet signature is associated with the input network port, and that the input network port is paired with a particular output network port. Thus, the network device identifies the output network port for sending the packet, without modifying contents of the packet.

Growing community of inventors

San Ramon, CA, United States of America

Yan Xiu