Specifying Priority On a Virtual Station Interface Discovery and Configuration Protocol Response

• US 20120063466A1
• Filed: 09/09/2011
• Published: 03/15/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/10/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Sultan, Robert, Li, Yizhou, Mack-Crane, T. Benjamin, Gu, Yingjie
• Granted Patent: US 8,953,621 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/401
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4641 Virtual LANs, VLANs, e.g. virtual private networks [VPN] LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone H04L12/462; encapsulation techniques H04L12/4633; routing of packets H04L45/00; packet switches H04L49/00; virtual private networks for security H04L63/0272
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4645 Details on frame tagging routing of packets H04L45/00; support for virtual LAN H04L49/354
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4675 Dynamic sharing of VLAN information amongst network nodes configuration of the network or of network elements H04L41/08
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0853 by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies

Abstract

An apparatus comprising an Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB) bridge coupled with an EVB station wherein the EVB bridge is configured to communicate to the EVB station a Filter Information (Info) field of a virtual station interface (VSI) discovery and configuration protocol (VDP) Associate Response message, and wherein the Filter Info field specifies a default Priority Code Point (PCP) value associated with at least one or all of a plurality of VID values carried by that VDP TLV Response.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

an Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB) bridge coupled to an EVB station;

wherein the EVB bridge is configured to communicate to the EVB station a Priority Code Point (PCP) value;

wherein the PCP value, if specified, is used by the EVB station as the default PCP value associated with any or all of the Virtual Local Area Network Identifier (VLAN) values carried by a Virtual Station Interface (VSI) Discovery Protocol (VDP) Response;

wherein the PCP value is specified in a Filter Information (Info) field of a VDP Type-Length-Value (TLV);

wherein the VDP TLV is carried by a VDP Response; and

wherein the PCP value, if specified, is used by the EVB station as the default PCP value associated with the VSI and VID.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the Filter Info field contains a PCP Significant (PS) bit associated with each PCP field, indicating whether the PCP field carries a PCP value (binary 1) or does not carry a PCP value (binary 0).

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein, if the PCP field carries a PCP value, then the EVB station can adopt that value as the default PCP value associated with the VSI and VID.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein, when sending data frames associated with a given VSI and VID, the EVB station can determine the PCP value associated with each frame by using an algorithm local to the EVB station.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein, for example, the PCP value can be based on the identity of an application associated with the frame as determined by examining higher layer information.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein, if for any given frame the algorithm does not provide a specific value of PCP, the PCP field is assigned the value of the default PCP associated with the VSI and VID.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the PCP value is three bits in size and wherein the PS value is one bit in size.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the PCP value if specified is used by the EVB station as a default PCP value associated with a VSI and a VID.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the Filter Info field comprises a PCP field and a PCP Significant (PS) bit associated with the PCP field and indicating whether the PCP field carries a PCP value or does not carry a PCP value.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein if the PCP field carries a PCP value then the EVB station is configured to adopt the PCP value as a default PCP value associated with a VSI and a VID.

11. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the EVB station is configured to send a plurality of data frames associated with a VSI and a VID and to determine a second PCP value associated with each frame using the specified PCP value in the Filter Info field and an algorithm local to the EVB station.

12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein if the algorithm does not provide the second PCP value then a PCP field in the Filter Info field is assigned a value of a default PCP associated with the VSI and VID.

13. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a plurality of PCP fields in the Filter Info field are set independently to indicate a plurality of PCP values for a plurality of corresponding VIDs.

14. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a first or last PCP field of a plurality of PCP fields in the Filter Info field is set to indicate a PCP value for a VSI.

15. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the PCP value is maintained in a VSI Type database or a port profile database in the EVB bridge or the network.

16. A networking component comprising:

a transmitter configured to send to a EVB bridge a virtual station interface (VSI) discovery and configuration protocol (VDP) Associate request message to request a priority code point (PCP) value for a plurality of media access control (MAC) frames bound to a virtual station interface (VSI) at an EVB station;

a receiver configured to receive from the EVB bridge a default PCP value in a VDP Associate response message; and

a logic unit configured to associate the default PCP value with the MAC frames sent on the VSI from the EVB station.

17. The networking component of claim 16, wherein the VDP Associate request comprises a VDP Type-Length-Value (TLV) field that includes a number of entries field, a MAC Address field, and a PCP/VID (PV) field, and wherein the PV field comprises a PCP Significant (PS) field, a PCP field, and a VID field.

18. The networking component of claim 17, wherein the PS field comprises about one bit, the PCP field comprises about three bits, and the VID field comprises about 12 bits.

19. The networking component of claim 17, wherein setting the PS field in a VDP Associate response message indicates that the PCP field is significant and not setting the PS field in the VDP Associate response message indicates that the PCP field is not used, and wherein if the PS field is set then the PCP field indicates a default priority value to determine the PCP value associated with the MAC frames.

20. The networking component of claim 17, wherein the PCP field specifies a value that is combined and used with other information known to the EVB station to specify the PCP value that is carried by the MAC frames.

21. The networking component of claim 20, wherein the value specified by the PCP field is combined with at least one of a value of the PCP set by a virtual machine (VM) user and associated with the VSI, an identity of an application associated with the MAC frames inferred by a hypervisor of the EVB station, and a priority value specified by a network-layer packet associated with the MAC frames.

22. The networking component of claim 17, wherein the PCP field comprises a value that identifies a service class (SC).

23. The networking component of claim 16, wherein the PCP value is a first PCP value, wherein the VDP Associate response message comprises both the PCP value and a service class (SC) value that is used to compute a second PCP value that is not greater than the first PCP value.

24. The networking component of claim 16, wherein the VDP Associate response message comprises a SC Significant (SCS) field, a SC field, a PCP Significant (PCPS) field, and a PCP field.

25. A method implemented by at least one network component, comprising:

sending from a virtual station to an EVB bridge a virtual station interface (VSI) discovery and configuration protocol (VDP) Associate request that comprises a first Priority Code Point (PCP) field and a first PCP Significant (PS) field that are not set to request a default priority value for a plurality of MAC frames transported on a VSI; and

receiving at the virtual station a VDP Associate response from the EVB bridge that comprises a second PCP field and a second PS field that are set to indicate the default priority value.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein the first PCP field and the first PS field that are not set to comprise about zero values, and wherein the second PS field is set to about one to indicate a significant second PCP field that is set to indicate the default priority value.

27. A method implemented by at least one network component, comprising:

receiving at an EVB bridge from a virtual station a virtual station interface (VSI) discovery and configuration protocol (VDP) Associate request that comprises a first Priority Code Point (PCP) field and a first PCP Significant (PS) field that are not set to request a default priority value for a plurality of MAC frames transported on a VSI; and

sending at the EVB bridge a VDP Associate response to the virtual station that comprises a second PCP field and a second PS field that are set to indicate the default priority value.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the first PCP field and the first PS field that are not set to comprise about zero values, and wherein the second PS field is set to about one to indicate a significant second PCP field that is set to indicate the default priority value.