VIRTUAL NETWORK DEVICE ARCHITECTURE

• US 20110225207A1
• Filed: 03/12/2010
• Published: 09/15/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/12/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dell Marketing Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Force10 Networks, Inc. (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: SUBRAMANIAN, KRISHNAMURTHY, KULKARNI, RAHUL
• Granted Patent: US 9,413,649 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/803
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/586 of virtual routers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/745 Address table lookup; Address filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/10 characterised by the switching fabric construction
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/253 using establishment or release of connections between ports
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/324 in the data link layer [OSI layer 2], e.g. HDLC
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/325 in the network layer [OSI layer 3], e.g. X.25 H04L69/16 takes precedence

Abstract

A network device such as a router or a switch is comprised of a control module and a plurality of physical line cards. The control module includes a control processor virtual machine, a plurality of route processing virtual machines and one or more instances of a line card virtual machine. The line card virtual machine operates to receive routing information base update information, to modify the routing information base according to the update information and to update each instance of a plurality of forwarding information bases included on each of the physical line cards.

Claims

1. A network device, comprising:

a plurality of line cards any one of which is comprised of a plurality of ingress ports for receiving at least one packet of information and means for processing and forwarding the at least one packet of information to at least one of a plurality of egress ports, each one of the plurality of line cards is in communication with one or more virtual processes that operate to support the means for processing and forwarding the at least one packet of information.

2. The network device of claim 1, wherein the one or more virtual processes are one or more of a layer 2 network protocol, a layer 3 network protocol and one or more line card virtual machines.

3. The network device of claim 2, wherein the first database is comprised of one or both of a layer 2 table and a layer 3 table.

4. The network device of claim 1, wherein the means for processing and forwarding the at least one packet of information is comprised of a packet processor and a second database.

5. The network device of claim 2, wherein any one of the one or more line card virtual machines is comprised of one or more agents, support for a first database and one instance of an operating system kernel.

6. The network device of claim 3, wherein the layer 2 and layer 3 protocols operate to derive information used to update the first database.

7. The network device of claim 6, wherein the information used to update the first database is comprised of a shortest path to the other network device, a distance to the other network device, access control list information, spanning tree information and network device aggregation information.

8. The network device of claim 4, wherein the second database is comprised of one or both of a layer 2 forwarding table and a layer 3 forwarding table.

9. The network device of claim 1 is a network router or a network switch.

10. The network device of claim 6, wherein the information used to update the first database is derived from information received from at least one other network device or a packet of information received from the data plane of the network device.

11. A method of operating a network device comprising:

one or more virtual processes receiving update information and using the update information to modify a first database;

an agent running on at least one of the one or more virtual processes detecting the modification to the first database; and

the agent using at least some information in the modification to the first database to modify a second database comprising a line card.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising:

one or more network protocols running on the network device using information received from at least one other network device or information received from the data plane of the network device to calculate the update information for the database.

13. The method claim 11 wherein the second database is comprised of one or both of a layer 2 forwarding table and a layer 3 forwarding table.

14. The method of claim 11 wherein the first database is comprised of one or both of a layer 2 table and a layer 3 table.

15. The method of claim 11 wherein at least one of the virtual processes is comprised of one or more agents, support for first database and one instance of an operating system kernel.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the one or more agents is a medium access control agent and a forwarding information base agent.

17. The method of claim 11 wherein the update information is comprised of a shortest path to the other network device, a distance to the other network device, access control list information, spanning tree information and network device aggregation information.

18. The method of claim 14 wherein at least one entry in the first database is comprised of a network I.D., a cost, a next hop address and a MAC address.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the cost is the number of hops to a destination network device.

20. The method of claim 11 wherein the network device is a router or a switch.

21. The method of claim 12 wherein the information received from the other network device is one or more of an IP address, MAC address, distance information, link attributes and group membership information.