Network Aware Application Management

• US 20110072127A1
• Filed: 09/18/2009
• Published: 03/24/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lund, Carsten, Van der Merwe, Jacobus, Gerber, Alexandre
• Granted Patent: US 8,825,820 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3003 Monitoring arrangements specially adapted to the computing system or computing system component being monitored
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3051 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3466 Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5682 Policies or rules for updating, deleting or replacing the stored data

Abstract

A method of managing a network application includes identifying a network path for the network application, obtaining network performance measurements along the network path, obtaining application performance information for the network application, and extracting infrastructure specific information for the infrastructure supporting the network application. The method further includes correlating the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify a performance issue affecting the network application, and modifying the application behavior, the network behavior, or any combination thereof in response to the performance issue.

Claims

1. A method of managing a network application, comprising:

identifying a network path for the network application;

obtaining network performance measurements along the network path;

obtaining application performance information for the network application;

extracting infrastructure specific information for infrastructure supporting the network application;

correlating the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify a performance issue affecting the network application; and

modifying the application behavior, modifying the network behavior, providing a notification, or any combination thereof in response to the performance issue.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying a network path includes calculating a network path based on an ingress point, an egress point, and network routing information.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying a network path includes collecting flow level information from a plurality of network elements and filtering based on traffic characteristics to identify which network elements comprise the network path.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein network performance measurements include bandwidth utilization, link capacity, packet queue utilization, or any combination thereof.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein application performance information include a number of dropped packets, response time, latency, data transfer rates, or any combination thereof.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein modifying the application behavior includes modify the request allocation of an application to direct requests away from a malfunctioning server.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein modifying the network behavior includes modify routing tables to direct traffic around a congested network component.

8. A system for managing a network application, comprising:

a network mapping module configured to identify a network path for the network application;

a network performance module configured to;

obtain network performance measurements along the network path; and

obtain infrastructure specific information for infrastructure supporting the network application;

an application performance module configured to obtain application performance information;

a correlation module configured to correlate the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify an application performance issue; and

an issue response module configured to modify the application behavior, modify the network behavior, provide a notification, or any combination thereof in response to the application performance issue.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein identifying a network path includes calculating a network path based on an ingress point, an egress point, and network routing information.

10. The system of claim 8 wherein identifying a network path includes collecting flow level information from a plurality of network elements and filtering based on traffic characteristics to identify which network elements comprise the network path.

11. The system of claim 8 wherein network performance measurements include bandwidth utilization, link capacity, packet queue utilization, or any combination thereof.

12. The system of claim 8 wherein infrastructure specific information includes processor utilization, memory utilization, storage utilization, number of concurrent processes, number of concurrent connections, or any combination thereof.

13. The system of claim 8 wherein modifying the application behavior includes modify the request allocation of an application to direct requests away from a malfunctioning server.

14. The system of claim 8 wherein modifying the network behavior includes modify routing tables to direct traffic around a congested network component.

15. A computer readable medium comprising a plurality of instructions to manipulate a processor, the plurality of instructions comprising:

instructions to identify a network path for a network application;

instructions to obtain network performance measurements along the network path;

instructions to obtain application performance information for the network application;

instructions to obtain infrastructure specific information for infrastructure supporting the network application; and

instructions to correlate the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify a performance issue related to the network application; and

instructions to modify the application behavior, modify the network behavior, provide a notification, or any combination thereof in response to the application performance issue.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein identifying a network path includes one of (i) calculating a network path based on an ingress point, an egress point, and network routing information, and (ii) collecting flow level information from a plurality of network elements and filtering based on traffic characteristics to identify which network elements comprise the network path.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein application performance information include a number of dropped packets, response time, latency, data transfer rates, or any combination thereof.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein infrastructure specific information includes processor utilization, memory utilization, storage utilization, number of concurrent processes, number of concurrent connections, or any combination thereof.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein modifying the application behavior includes modify the request allocation of an application to direct requests away from a malfunctioning server.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein modifying the network behavior includes modify routing tables to direct traffic around a congested network component.