Controller Driven OAM for OpenFlow

• US 20130010600A1
• Filed: 10/21/2011
• Published: 01/10/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/08/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Original Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Inventors: Jocha, David, Kern, Andras
• Granted Patent: US 8,964,563 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/236.2
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/00 Arrangements for maintenance, administration or management of data switching networks, e.g. of packet switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/026 using flow identification
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/062 related to network traffic
• 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 43/0811 by checking connectivity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0829 Packet loss
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/20 the monitoring system or the monitored elements being virtualised, abstracted or software-defined entities, e.g. SDN or NFV
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/555 Error detection

Abstract

A method performed by a network element implementing an OpenFlow controller, the OpenFlow controller including an OAM module. The OAM module services an OAM function request in a network implementing OpenFlow. The method requests that a subset of OpenFlow switches in the network report metrics for an OpenFlow data flow to provide the OAM module with information for executing the requested OAM function. The method includes receiving by an OAM module a request to execute the OAM function, generating a trigger monitoring message defining actions to be performed by an OpenFlow switch, wherein the actions are to provide the metrics for the OpenFlow data flow, receiving a plurality of monitor response messages, each including the metrics for the OpenFlow data flow, correlating the plurality of monitor response messages with the OAM function request, executing the requested OAM function, and returning a result of the requested OAM function.

Claims

1. A method performed by a network element implementing an OpenFlow controller, the OpenFlow controller including an operations, administration and management (OAM) module, the OAM module to service an OAM function request in a network implementing OpenFlow, the method to request that a subset of OpenFlow switches in the network report metrics for an OpenFlow data flow to provide the OAM module with information for executing the requested OAM function, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving by an OAM module of the network element a request to execute the OAM function;

generating a trigger monitoring message by the OAM module, the trigger monitoring message defining actions to be performed by an OpenFlow switch in the subset of OpenFlow switches, wherein the actions are to provide the metrics for the OpenFlow data flow;

sending the trigger monitoring message to the OpenFlow switch;

receiving a plurality of monitor response messages from the subset of OpenFlow switches, each of the plurality of monitor response messages including the metrics for the OpenFlow data flow;

correlating the plurality of monitor response messages with the OAM function request;

executing the requested OAM function using the metrics of the OpenFlow data flow by the OAM module; and

returning a result of the requested OAM function.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the trigger monitoring message further comprises the step of:

defining an OAM packet to be aggregated by the OpenFlow switch with the OpenFlow data flow.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the trigger monitoring message further comprises the step of:

defining actions for a flow table or group table of an OpenFlow switch module in the OpenFlow switch.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the trigger monitoring message further comprises the step of:

defining the metrics to be reported by a protocol agent of the OpenFlow switch.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein correlating the plurality of monitor response messages with the OAM function request, further comprises the step of:

matching the monitor response messages with the requested OAM function using the OAM data packet within the monitor response messages.

6. A method performed by a network element implementing an OpenFlow switch, the OpenFlow switch including a protocol agent and an OpenFlow switch module, the OpenFlow switch to report metrics for an OpenFlow data flow to an OpenFlow controller, wherein the metrics are to support operations, administration and management (OAM) functionality of the OpenFlow controller, wherein the OpenFlow switch forwards an OAM packet with the OpenFlow data flow and collects the metrics for the OpenFlow data flow, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving by the OpenFlow switch a trigger monitoring message from the OpenFlow controller;

generating an OAM packet by the protocol agent, the OAM packet defined by the trigger monitoring message;

forwarding the OAM packet through the OpenFlow switch module to aggregate the OAM packet with the OpenFlow data flow;

detecting the OAM packet in the OpenFlow switch module;

generating a monitoring response message by the protocol agent in response to the detecting of the OAM packet;

collecting the metrics from the OpenFlow switch module for the OpenFlow data flow and OAM data packet; and

sending the monitor response message with the metrics to the OpenFlow controller.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising the step of:

adding an action to a flow table or group table of the OpenFlow switch module defined in the trigger monitoring message.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising the step of:

inserting the OAM packet into the monitoring response message by the protocol agent.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein collecting the metrics further comprises the step of:

reading a counter of a flow table entry or a counter of a group table entry; and

reading a time stamp of an execution of the flow table entry or the group table entry.

10. A network element implementing an OpenFlow controller, the OpenFlow controller to service an OAM function request in a network implementing OpenFlow, the OpenFlow controller to request that a subset of OpenFlow switches in the network report metrics for an OpenFlow data flow to provide the information for executing the requested OAM function, the network element comprising:

the OpenFlow controller including an operations, administration and management (OAM) module and a message correlation module,

the OAM module configured to process the OAM function request by executing an OAM function specified by the OAM function request and generating a trigger monitoring message, the trigger monitoring message defining actions to be performed by an OpenFlow switch in the subset of OpenFlow switches, wherein the actions are to provide the metrics for the OpenFlow data flow, wherein the OAM module is configured to send the trigger monitoring message to the OpenFlow switch, to execute the requested OAM function using the metrics of the OpenFlow data flow provided by the message correlation module, and to return a result of the requested OAM function,

the message correlation module communicatively coupled to OAM module, the message correlation module configured to receive a plurality of monitor response messages from the subset of OpenFlow switches, each of the plurality of monitor response messages including the metrics for the OpenFlow data flow, wherein the message correlation module is configured to correlate the plurality of monitor response messages with the OAM function request.

11. The network element of claim 10, wherein the OAM module is further configured to define an OAM packet to be forwarded by the OpenFlow switch with the OpenFlow data flow.

12. The network element of claim 10, wherein the OAM module is further configured to define actions for a flow table or group table of an OpenFlow switch module in the OpenFlow switch.

13. The network element of claim 10, wherein the OAM module is further configured to define the metrics to be reported by a protocol agent of the OpenFlow switch.

14. The network element of claim 10, wherein the OAM module is further configured to match the monitor response messages with the requested OAM function using the OAM data packet within the monitor response messages.