DYNAMIC RESHUFFLING OF TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SCHEDULER HIERARCHY

• US 20130194922A1
• Filed: 01/28/2013
• Published: 08/01/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/31/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Marvell Israel Limited (Marvell Technology Group Limited)
• Original Assignee: Marvell Israel MISL Limited (Marvell Technology Group Limited)
• Inventors: SUKONIK, VITALY, OPHIR, EINAT, TAMIR, RAFI, DUNAEVSKY, MARK
• Granted Patent: US 9,154,437 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/230
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/125 by balancing the load, e.g. traffic engineering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/50 Queue scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/522 Dynamic queue service slot or variable bandwidth allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/60 implementing hierarchical scheduling

Abstract

There is provided a network device comprising a physical queue management processor configured to manage attributes of physical queues of data packets. The network device further comprises a scheduling processor which is configured to manage scheduling nodes that establish a scheduling hierarchy among the physical queues in a network, utilizing a bi-directional mapping of the physical queues to logical queues. The network device further comprises a traffic management processor which is configured to modify the bi-directional mapping mentioned above.

Claims

1. A network device, comprising:

a physical queue management processor, configured to manage attributes of physical queues of data packets;

a scheduling processor, configured to manage scheduling nodes that establish a scheduling hierarchy among the physical queues in a network, utilizing a bi-directional mapping of the physical queues to logical queues;

a traffic management processor configured to modify the bi-directional mapping.

2. The network device as set forth in claim 1, wherein the scheduling processor is configured to save in a storage medium the bi-directional mapping as an association between a scheduling node, a logical queue range, and a physical queue range.

3. The network device as set forth in claim 1, wherein the traffic management processor is further configured to update, in a storage medium, an association of the scheduling nodes with the logical queues.

4. The network device as set forth in claim 3, wherein the traffic management processor is further configured to respond to a command indicating a physical queue and its associated scheduling node, by modifying the bi-directional mapping of the indicated physical queue to one of the logical queues.

5. The network device as set forth in claim 4, wherein the traffic management processor is configured to assign the one of the logical queues to have one or more attributes based on another one of the logical queues already associated with the indicated node.

6. The network device as set forth in claim 3, wherein the traffic management is configured to save in the storage medium an entry indicating the association of one of the nodes with a plurality of the logical queues includes a logical queue range start identifier and a logical queue range end identifier.

7. The network device as set forth in claim 6, wherein the traffic management is configured to save in the storage medium the entry, free of one or more logical queue identifiers intermediate with respect to the logical queue range start identifier and the logical queue range end identifier.

8. The network device as set forth in claim 1, wherein the traffic management processors modifies the bi-directional mapping without causing the, the physical queues to stop sending and receiving operations.

9. A network device, comprising:

a physical queue management processor, configured to manage attributes of physical queues of data packets;

a scheduling processor, configured to manage scheduling nodes that establish a scheduling hierarchy among the physical queues in a network, utilizing a bi-directional mapping of the physical queues to logical queues;

a traffic management processor configured to construct a range of logical queues, the range including unmapped logical queues and a first plurality of logical queues mapped to a first plurality of physical queues.

10. The network device as set forth in claim 9, wherein the traffic management processor is further configured to:

save in a storage medium a first entry which associates the range to a scheduling node;

enable the first plurality of physical queues;

disable a mapping between a second plurality of physical queues already associated with the scheduling node and a second plurality of logical queues;

save in the storage medium a second entry which associates the unmapped logical queues in the range to the second plurality of physical queues; and

enable the mapping between the second plurality of physical queues and the unmapped logical queues.

11. A scheduling method when executed by a network device, comprising:

receiving a message specifying an instruction to move a first plurality of physical queues associated with a first scheduling node of a network and with a first plurality of logical queues to a second scheduling node of the network;

constructing a range of logical queues, the range including unmapped logical queues and a second plurality of logical queues mapped to a second plurality of physical queues associated with the second scheduling node;

saving in a storage medium a first entry which associates the range to the second scheduling node;

enabling the second plurality of physical queues;

disabling a first mapping between the first plurality of physical queues associated with the first scheduling node and the first plurality of logical queues;

saving in the storage medium a second entry which associates the unmapped logical queues in the range to the first plurality of physical queues; and

enabling a second mapping between the first plurality of physical queues and the unmapped logical queues.

12. The method set forth in claim 11, wherein:

the message specifies an instruction to add the first plurality of physical queues to the scheduling node.

13. The method as set forth in claim 11, wherein:

the constructed range has a queue size equal at least to the number of queues in the first plurality of physical queues added to the number of queues in the second plurality of physical queues.

14. The method as set forth in claim 11, wherein:

the first entry includes a first queue number and a second queue number, the first queue number indicating the beginning of the range and the second queue number indicating the end of the range.