METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR COLLECTING TOPOLOGY INFORMATION

• US 20130148547A1
• Filed: 12/13/2012
• Published: 06/13/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Viavi Solutions, Inc. (Lumentum Holdings Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Viavi Solutions, Inc. (Lumentum Holdings Inc.)
• Inventors: Page, John M., Bauer, Samuel M., Hsueh, Canning, Stevens, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 9,397,895 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/255
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/622 Layer-2 addresses, e.g. medium access control [MAC] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/20 Hop count for routing purposes, e.g. TTL
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/00 Reducing energy consumption in communication networks

Abstract

A method of providing topology information about a network to a topology manager is disclosed. The network includes a plurality of sensors each having a sensor ID, and the method includes performing the following steps at each of the plurality of sensors: receiving a stream of packets and identifying a topology trace packet in the stream of packets, wherein the topology trace packet has a destination address and an ID of a previous sensor, including the sensor ID in the topology trace packet, sending the topology trace packet to the destination address, forming a report message so as to include the sensor ID, the previous sensor ID, sending the report to the topology manager; and, providing network addresses of adjacent nodes to the topology manager.

Claims

1. A method of providing topology information to a topology manager about a network comprising a first sensor having a first sensor ID and a second sensor having a second sensor ID, the method comprising, at the first sensor:

receiving a stream of packets and identifying a topology trace packet therein, wherein the topology trace packet has a destination address, and the second sensor ID in a payload of the topology trace packet,

modifying the topology trace packet so as to include the first sensor ID into the payload, and sending the topology trace packet to the destination address,

forming a report so as to include the first sensor ID, the second sensor ID, and Time-To-Live (TTL) data, and sending the report to the topology manager for providing the topology manager with information about spatial relation between the first and second sensors.

2. The method as defined in claim 1 further comprising providing network addresses of adjacent nodes from the first sensor to the topology manager for providing the topology manager with information about devices adjacent to the first sensor.

3. The method as defined in claim 2 further comprising capturing a plurality of packets at the first sensor, sending a copy of each of the plurality of packets to the topology manager, and forwarding each of the plurality of packets to its destination address.

4. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the report includes a time-to-live (TTL) value of the topology trace packet for enabling the topology manager calculate a distance between the first and second sensors.

5. The method as defined in claim 2 wherein the report includes a MAC destination address of the topology trace packet or a MAC source address of the topology trace packet.

6. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the first and second sensors are addressless devices.

7. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein sending the report to the topology manager includes using a source IP address of the topology trace packet.

8. The method as defined in claim 1 further comprising capturing a control packet conforming to a control protocol and sending at least a portion of the control packet to the topology manager for providing the topology manager with information about remote devices.

9. The method as defined in claim 8 wherein the control protocol is one of ICMP Router Discovery Protocol, Link Layer Discovery Protocol, Logical link control protocol, Cisco Discovery Protocol, Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP), or Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP).

10. The method as defined in claim 8 further comprising sending a router discovery solicitation message by the first sensor for obtaining the information about remote devices.

11. The method as defined in claim 1 further comprising receiving requests from the topology manager at the first sensor to start topology filtering.

12. The method as defined in claim 1 further comprising receiving the report at the topology manager and constructing a partial topology representation based on information obtained from the report.

13. The method as defined in claim 12 further comprising receiving a plurality of reports and combining partial topology representations to form a combined topology representation of the network.

14. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the report packet includes a number of hops between the first sensor and the second sensor.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium including computer program instructions that cause a computer to implement the method defined in claim 1.

16. A system comprising a plurality of sensors each having a sensor ID, adapted for implementing the method defined in claim 1.

17. The system as defined in claim 16 comprising the topology manager.

18. A system comprising a first sensors having a first sensor ID and a second sensor having a second sensor ID, wherein the first sensor comprises:

an input port for receiving a stream of packets;

a tangible memory with computer instructions stored therein; and

,

a processor for executing the computer instructions and causing the first sensor to (i) identify a topology trace packet in the stream of packets, wherein the topology trace packet has a destination IP address, and the second sensor ID in a payload of the topology trace packet, (ii) modify the topology trace packet so as to include the first sensor ID, and send the topology trace packet to the destination IP address, (iii) form a report message so as to include the first sensor ID, the second sensor ID, and TTL data, and send the report message to a topology manager; and

(iv) provide network addresses of adjacent nodes to the topology manager.

19. The system as defined in claim 18 comprising a topology manager comprising:

an input port for receiving a plurality of reports;

a tangible memory with computer instructions stored therein; and

,

a processor for executing the computer instructions and causing the topology manager to form a topology representation of the network based on the sensor IDs obtained from the reports.