Method and device for the transfer of snmp messages over udp with compression of periodically repeating sequences

• US 20050038912A1
• Filed: 08/09/2002
• Published: 02/17/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 08/13/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telecom Italia S.p.A.
• Original Assignee: Telecom Italia S.p.A.
• Inventors: Ghirardi, Maurizio
• Granted Patent: US 7,734,825 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/247
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 7/30 Compression speech analysis-synthesis for redundancy reduction G10L19/00; for image communication H04N; Expansion; Suppression of unnecessary data, e.g. redundancy reduction
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 7/40 Conversion to or from variable length codes, e.g. Shannon-Fano code, Huffman code, Morse code
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0213 Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/04 Protocols for data compression, e.g. ROHC
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/16 Implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/161 Implementation details of TCP/IP or UDP/IP stack architecture; Specification of modified or new header fields
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/164 Adaptation or special uses of UDP protocol
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/169 Special adaptations of TCP, UDP or IP for interworking of IP based networks with other networks protocols for interworking, protocol conversion H04L69/08
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

The invention concerns the transfer of messages using an UDP transport. A typical example is offered by the SNMP messages, used to perform the communication (C1, C2) between manager units (M, M′) and agent units (A, A′) within a system for the management of data communication networks, such as internet. The payload of messages and preferably the messages as a whole shall undergo a compression operation based on the recognition of sequences that periodically appear in the message.

Claims

1. Method for the transfer over UDP (User Datagram Protocol) of messages incorporating a payload (O1D), characterised in that it comprises the step of submitting at least said payload to a compression step (302, 104, 204) based on the recognition of sequences that periodically appear in the messages.

2. Method according to claim 1, characterised in that said compression step is performed according to a technique of gzip type, such as zLib.

3. Method according to claim 1, characterised in that it comprises the step of indicating the executed compression step into the message transferred over UPD.

4. Method according to claim 3, characterised in that it uses a bit field of the UDP header to indicate the executed compression step (302).

5. Method according to claim 4, characterised in that the bits from bit 62 to bit 69 of the UDP header are used to indicate the executed compression step {302).

6. Method according to claim 5, characterised in that it comprises the step of setting to 1 at least one among the bits 62 to 69 of the header of the UDP message.

7. Method according to claim 1, applied to the transfer of SNMP messages, characterised in that the compression step comprises the following operations:

reading (100) an entire SNMP message,

encoding {102) the read message in hexadecimal format, and

submitting the message encoded in the hexadecimal form to a compression (104).

8. Method according to claim 1, applied to the transfer of SNMP messages, characterised by a reception step comprising the operations of.

submitting a received message to a de-compression step (204) complementary to said compression step, so that the message submitted to the de-compression step can be obtained in hexadecimal format,

decoding (202) the message submitted to the de-compression step (204) starting from the hexadecimal format, and

reconstructing (200) the entire SNMP message starting from the decoded message.

9. Method according to claim 7, characterised in that it comprises an encapsulating operation into a standard SNMP message of the message submitted to said compression step (104).

10. Method according to claim 9, characterised in that it comprises the operations of:

reading by bytes (108) the message submitted to said compression step {104) and converting (110) it into a corresponding message in ASCII characters,

generating {112) a set of Variable Bindings, including a first OID indicative of the size of the original file and subsequent OID/value pairs carrying parts of said message submitted to said compression step (104), converted into ASCII characters,

reconstructing a header information of the SNMP message,

encoding (114) the SNMP message so obtained into a hexadecimal format so as to generate the UDP payload, and

transferring (116) over UDP the payload so generated.

11. Method according to claim 8, characterised in that the reception step comprises the operations of:

receiving the message submitted to said compression step as a UDP payload (216),

submitting the payload so received to a hexadecimal decoding operation (214),

recognising and assembling (212) the Variable Binding of the message submitted to hexadecimal decoding, and

submitting the message recognised and assembled in the recognising and assembling operation (212) to a decoding operation from ASCII to binary (210),

submitting the message decoded in binary form to said de-compression step {204).

12. Method according to claim 7, characterised in that it comprises the step of integrating the message submitted to said compression step {104) through encapsulation over UDP.

13. Method according to claim 12, characterised in that it comprises the steps of:

configuring said message submitted to said compression step (104) as PDU payload of an UDP message (payload of PDU-UDP), and

transferring the payload of PDU-UDP created this way from a given transmission port of a transmitter to a given reception port of a receiver.

14. Method according to claim 13, characterised in that it includes the steps of:

receiving said message as a payload of a PDU-UDP received at the reception port, and

extracting said payload from said UDP message.

15. Method according to claim 13, characterised in that it comprises the step of transmitting between a transmission terminal (M, M′

;

A, A′

) and a receiving terminal (A, A′

;

M, M′

) a synchronisation message of SNNP type, identifying said transmission port and/or said reception port.

16. System for managing data communication networks, including at least one manager unit (M, M′

) and at least one agent unit (A, A′

), communicating with one another over at least one channel (C1, C2) through the transmission of messages, characterised in that said messages are transferred over UDP following the method based on claim 1.

17. Data processing product, directly loadable into the internal memory of a digital processor and including parts of software code to perform the method according to claim 1, when the product is run on a digital processor.