MESH ARCHITECTURES FOR MANAGED SWITCHING ELEMENTS

• US 20130058252A1
• Filed: 08/26/2011
• Published: 03/07/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/06/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Casado, Martin, Amidon, Keith E., Koponen, Teemu, Lambeth, W. Andrew
• Granted Patent: US 8,964,598 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/254
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/07 Responding to the occurrence of a fault, e.g. fault tolerance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/17312 Routing techniques specific to parallel machines, e.g. wormhole, store and forward, shortest path problem congestion routing on a LAN H04L45/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/622 Layer-2 addresses, e.g. medium access control [MAC] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0816 the condition being an adaptation, e.g. in response to network events
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0853 by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0894 Policy-based network configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/122 of virtualised topologies, e.g. software-defined networks [SDN] or network function virtualisation [NFV]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/00 Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks routing or path finding in wireless networks H04W40/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/02 Topology update or discovery
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/036 Updating the topology between route computation elements, e.g. between OpenFlow controllers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/586 of virtual routers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/76 Routing in software-defined topologies, e.g. routing between virtual machines
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/783 Distributed allocation of resources, e.g. bandwidth brokers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/00 Packet switching elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/1546 using pipelined operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/3063 Pipelined operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/70 : Virtual switches
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/5007 : Internet protocol [IP] addresses

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a network architecture that includes several lower level managed switching elements for forwarding network data to several of network hosts. The network architecture includes a set of higher level managed switching elements. The several lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements implement several logical datapath sets. Communication channels are established among the several lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a mesh topology.

Claims

1. A network architecture comprising:

a plurality of lower level managed switching elements for forwarding network data to a plurality of network hosts; and

a set of higher level managed switching elements, wherein the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements are for implementing a plurality of logical datapath sets, wherein communication channels are established among the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a mesh topology.

2. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the communication channels are established among the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a partial mesh topology.

3. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the communication channels are established among the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a full mesh topology.

4. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein, for each managed switching element in the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements, a communication channel is established between the managed switching element and each of the other managed switching elements in the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements.

5. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein, for each managed switching element in the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements, a communication channel is established between the managed switching element and at least one, but not all, of the other managed switching elements in the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements.

6. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein each network host of the plurality of network is coupled to a lower level managed switching element of the plurality of lower level managed switching elements.

7. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the plurality of network hosts comprises a first set of network hosts associated with a first logical datapath set of the plurality of logical datapath sets and a second set of network hosts associated with a second logical datapath set of the plurality of logical datapath sets, wherein the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements forward network data between the first set of network hosts based on the first logical datapath sets and forward network data between the second set of network hosts based on the second logical datapath sets.

8. The network architecture of claim 1 further comprising a set of network controllers for controlling the pluralities of higher level and lower level managed switching elements to implement the plurality of logical datapath sets.

9. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements are software switching elements.

10. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the plurality of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements are virtual switching elements.

11. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the communication channels are network tunnels established by a tunneling protocol.

12. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the plurality of higher level managed switching elements are for processing multi-recipient network data.

22. The network architecture of claim 1, wherein the first set of lower level managed switching elements does not directly forward data to the second set of lower level managed switching elements.

13. A network architecture comprising:

a first set of lower level managed switching elements for forwarding network data to a first plurality of network hosts;

a second set of lower level managed switching elements for forwarding network data to a second plurality of network hosts, wherein the first and second sets of lower level managed switching elements are for implementing a plurality of logical datapath sets; and

a set of higher level managed switching elements for communicating network data between the first plurality of network hosts and the second plurality of network hosts, wherein communication channels are established between the first and second sets of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a mesh topology.

14. The network architecture of claim 13, wherein communication channels are established between the first set of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a full mesh topology.

15. The network architecture of claim 14, wherein communication channels are established between the second set of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a full mesh topology.

16. The network architecture of claim 13, wherein communication channels are established between the first set of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a partial mesh topology.

17. The network architecture of claim 16, wherein communication channels are established between the first set of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on a partial mesh topology.

18. The network architecture of claim 13, wherein, for each lower level managed switching element in the first set of lower level managed switching elements, a communication channel is established between the lower level managed switching element and each of the other lower level managed switching elements except the lower level managed switching elements in the second set of lower level managed switching elements.

19. The network architecture of claim 18, wherein, for each lower level managed switching element in the second set of lower level managed switching elements, a communication channel is established between the lower level managed switching element and each of the other lower level managed switching elements except the lower level managed switching elements in the first set of lower level managed switching elements.

20. The network architecture of claim 19, wherein, for each lower level managed switching element in the first set of lower level managed switching elements, a communication channel is established between the lower level managed switching element and each higher level managed switching element in the set of higher level managed switching elements.

21. The network architecture of claim 20, wherein, for each lower level managed switching element in the second set of lower level managed switching elements, a communication channel is established between the lower level managed switching element and each higher level managed switching element in the set of higher level managed switching elements.

23. The network architecture of claim 13 further comprising a third set of lower level managed switching elements for (1) forwarding network data to a third plurality of network hosts and (2) implementing the plurality of logical datapath sets, wherein the set of higher level managed switching elements is further for communicating network data between the first and second pluralities of network hosts and the third plurality of network hosts, wherein communication channels are established between the third set of lower level managed switching elements and the set of higher level managed switching elements based on the mesh topology.

24. The network architecture of claim 23, wherein the first set of lower level managed switching elements does not directly forward data to the second and third sets of lower level managed switching elements, wherein the second set of lower level managed switching elements does not directly forward data to the third set of lower level managed switching elements.

25. The network architecture of claim 13, wherein the communication channels are network tunnels established by a tunneling protocol.