SCALABLE AND PREDICTIVE PACKET PROCESSING

• US 20150117455A1
• Filed: 11/27/2013
• Published: 04/30/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/28/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Limited (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: UMESH, Santhosh, PURUSHOTHAMAN, Vijay Anand, JANARDHAN, Santosh Kalluthirike, VARSHNEY, Tarun Kuma, KALKUNTE, Mohan
• Granted Patent: US 9,288,144 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/392
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/38 Flow based routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/742 Route cache; Operation thereof

Abstract

A system for scalable and predictive packet processing may include a memory and a processor. The memory may be configured to store packet processing results performed on a packet. The processor may be configured to apply the stored packet processing results to subsequently received packets that have the same flow identifier as the processed packet without performing ingress packet processing on the subsequent packets.

Claims

1. A method of scalable and predictive packet processing, the method comprising:

performing, by a processor, ingress packet processing on a first received packet having a predictive packet processing (PPP) flow identifier;

storing one or more packet processing results of the ingress packet processing performed on the first packet in a memory management unit; and

performing a packet action on one or more subsequently received packets having the same PPP flow identifier as the first received packet, the packet action being based on the stored one or more packet processing results of the first received packet.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the packet action is performed without performing ingress packet processing on the subsequently received packets having the same PPP flow identifier as the first received packet.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that the PPP flow identifier is to be trusted; and

performing the packet action based on determining that a PPP flow identifier lookup is valid.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that the PPP flow identifier is not to be trusted;

deriving an alternate PPP flow identifier; and

performing the packet action based on determining that an alternate PPP flow identifier lookup is valid.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the alternate PPP flow identifier is derived based on source attributes and the PPP flow identifier.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the PPP flow identifier is an external flow identifier and the alternate PPP flow identifier is an internal flow identifier.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the packet action comprises forwarding the subsequently received packets to another device.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the packet action further comprises editing the subsequently received packets.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and subsequently received packets comprise a PPP tag.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the PPP tag comprises a PPP ether-type field and a Flow-ID field.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and subsequently received packets comprise a burst of packets over a dedicated ingress port.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the first and subsequently received packets comprise a PPP tag comprising a PPP ether-type field, a count value field and a count reset field.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

determining that a counter has not been reset; and

performing the packet action based on determining that a per-port count is not zero.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the PPP tag further comprises at least one of a byte count and a time interval.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the PPP tag is used to predictively apply one or more actions for a next set of incoming packets.

16. A system for providing predictive packet processing, the system comprising:

an ingress packet processor configured to perform ingress packet processing on a first received packet having a predictive packet processing (PPP) tag comprising a PPP flow identifier, pass one or more packet processing results of the ingress packet processing performed on the first received packet to a memory management unit, pass the first received packet to an egress packet processor, and pass subsequently received packets having PPP tags with the same PPP flow identifier as the first received packet to the egress packet processor;

the memory management unit configured to store the one or more packet processing results of the ingress packet processing performed on the first received packet; and

the egress packet processor configured to perform a packet action on the passed subsequently received packets based on the one or more packet processing results stored in the memory management unit.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the ingress packet processor is further configured to pass the subsequently received packets having PPP tags with the same PPP flow identifier as the first packet to the egress packet processor without performing ingress packet processing.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the first and subsequently received packets are received as a burst of packets over a dedicated link, and wherein the ingress packet processor is further configured to pass the subsequently received packets to the egress packet processor without performing ingress packet processing based on a count value.

19. A computer program product comprising instructions stored in a tangible computer-readable storage medium, the instructions comprising:

instructions for performing ingress packet processing on a first of a plurality of incoming packets having a predictive packet processing (PPP) tag comprising a PPP flow identifier, the incoming packets being received over one or more ingress ports of a network device;

instructions for storing one or more packet processing results of the ingress packet processing performed on the first packet in a memory management unit; and

instructions for performing a packet action on one or more subsequent incoming packets having the same PPP tag flow identifier as the first packet, the packet action being based on the stored one or more packet processing results.

20. The computer program product of claim 19, wherein the packet action is performed without performing ingress packet processing on the one or more subsequent packets.