METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING A NETWORK TOPOLOGY DURING NETWORK PROVISIONING

• US 20120320795A1
• Filed: 08/24/2012
• Published: 12/20/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Juniper Networks Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Juniper Networks Incorporated
• Inventors: Shukla, Amit, Ayyangar, Arthi
• Granted Patent: US 9,032,054 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/254
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/70 Virtual switches

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving a provisioning instruction including a device identifier from an external management entity, receiving the device identifier from a network device, associating the provisioning instruction the network device, and sending a portion of the provisioning instruction to the network device. The device identifier being associated with a virtual resource. The associating is based on the device identifier of the virtual resource and a device identifier of a network device. The portion of the provisioning instruction is sent to the network device based on the associating.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising:

a network device having a physical port configured to be operatively coupled to a host device hosting a virtual resource, the network device configured to be operatively coupled to a network management module,

the network device configured to send to the network management module a device identifier of the virtual resource and a device identifier of the network device such that the network management module associates the device identifier of the network device with a provisioning instruction received from an external management entity and including the device identifier of the virtual resource based on the device identifier of the virtual resource.

2. An apparatus, comprising:

a network management module implemented as a hardware module or a software module stored in a memory, the network management module configured to be operatively coupled to a network device having a physical port operatively coupled to a host device hosting a virtual resource,

the network management module configured to receive a device identifier of the virtual resource and a device identifier of the network device from the network device,

the network management module configured to associate a provisioning instruction including the device identifier of the virtual resource with the device identifier of the network device based on the device identifier of the virtual resource,

the network management module configured to send, based on the association between the provisioning instruction and the device identifier of the network device, the provisioning instruction to the network device such that the network device provisions the physical port based on the provisioning instruction.