SCALABILITY OF PROVIDING PACKET FLOW MANAGEMENT

• US 20080137671A1
• Filed: 12/07/2007
• Published: 06/12/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/07/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: AGARWAL, Kaitki, GHAI, Rajat
• Granted Patent: US 8,724,463 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/401
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/38 Flow based routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/72 Routing based on the source address
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/74 Address processing for routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/7453 using hashing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/125 by balancing the load, e.g. traffic engineering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/2483 involving identification of individual flows
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1016 IP multimedia subsystem [IMS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/102 Gateways arrangements for connecting between networks having differing types of switching systems, e.g. gateways, H04L12/66
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/103 in the network
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1045 Proxies, e.g. for session initiation protocol [SIP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1046 Call controllers; Call servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1104 Session initiation protocol [SIP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/912 Applications of a database
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/913 Multimedia
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/918 Location

Abstract

Systems and methods for managing packet flows in a communication network are provided. Packet information can be cached on different levels and used to avoid external queries. The cache information can also be correlated with other types of information, such as location information, to be able to serve that information quicker than if one or more external queries were to be made. A demux manager can provide routing and session setup, by routing packets that already have a session to the session manager and assigning packets to a session manager if they are not already assigned to a session. The tiered architecture also provides scalability to many users and minimizes delays even during high call volumes because the load can be distributed well across the gateway'"'"'s resources.

Claims

1. A gateway in a communication network comprising:

a demux manager residing in the gateway that processes one or more incoming packets, caches information relating to new process instance assignments, and allocates a process instance to a new packet flow;

a process instance that caches information relating to sessions the process instance is handling in a computer readable medium in the gateway; and

a network processing unit flow residing in the gateway that is setup by the process instance to route incoming packets that match specified information to a corresponding process instance.

2. The gateway of claim 1, further comprising the demux manager providing direction handling of incoming session initiation protocol (SIP) packets to destinations internal to the gateway and destination external to the gateway.

3. The gateway of claim 2, wherein the destination external to the gateway is a serving-call session control function (S-CSCF).

4. The gateway of claim 1, wherein the process instance is a session manager.

5. The gateway of claim 1, further comprising a call session control function (CSCF) core that receives an indication from the demux manager of which CSCF function processing to perform on a packet.

6. The gateway of 1, further comprising the demux manager performing a load balancing method in selecting the process instance to handle the session.

7. A method of processing packets comprising:

receiving a packet at a gateway;

determining if the packet matches a limited set of criteria, and if there is a match forwarding the packet to a corresponding process instance, otherwise forwarding to a demux manager;

analyzing the packet at the demux manager to determine whether to assign a new process instance to handle a new packet flow and determining how to route the packet; and

receiving a new packet at a process instance that is assigned from the demux manager and creating a cache entry with information from the new packet.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising sending from the process instance a limited set of criteria to set up a flow in the network processing unit to forward packets that match the limited set of criteria.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising receiving the packet at the demux manager and comparing the packet to a set of criteria of packets associated with a process instance, if there is match forwarding the packet to that process instance, otherwise allocating the packet to a process instance.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the process instance is a session manager.

11. The method of claim 7, further comprising receiving an indication from the demux manager at a call session control function (CSCF) core regarding which CSCF function processing to perform on the packet.

12. The method of claim 7, further comprising performing a load balancing method in selecting the process instance to handle the new packet flow at the demux manager.