REPRESENTATIVE BANDWIDTH CALCULATION SYSTEMS AND METHODS IN A NETWORK

• US 20160218943A1
• Filed: 01/26/2015
• Published: 07/28/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 01/26/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ciena Corporation
• Original Assignee: Ciena Corporation
• Inventors: DJUKIC, Petar, MORRIS, Todd, ARMOLAVICIUS, Romualdas
• Granted Patent: US 10,015,057 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/142 using statistical or mathematical methods
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0894 Packet rate

Abstract

Systems and methods for a representative bandwidth calculation in a network include receiving a request for representative bandwidth information; obtaining network measurements; combining, filtering, and retiming network measurements based on the request to determine the representative bandwidth information. The systems and methods convert the combined, filtered, and retimed network measurements into the representative bandwidth information which has an additive property in an algebraic domain. The additive property enables the representative bandwidth information to be used for admission control, overbooking determinations, network planning, and/or dynamic pricing in the network.

Claims

1. A method for a representative bandwidth calculation in a network, the method comprising:

receiving a request for representative bandwidth information;

obtaining network measurements; and

combining, filtering, and retiming the network measurements based on the request, to determine the representative bandwidth information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the combining, filtering, and retiming comprises combining and filtering the network measurements at a granularity of the network, a sub-network of the network, a link of the network, a virtual network of the network, an end-to-end flow in the network, a customer in the network, or a class-of-service in the network, wherein the granularity is based on the request, and synchronizing sampling times across the network measurements.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the combining, filtering, and retiming comprises combining and filtering the network measurements to obtain historical time samples corresponding to busy periods in the past, based on the request, and synchronizing sampling times across the network measurements.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the retimed network measurements are merged by combining ordered lists from different sources to a requested granularity level.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the method converts the combined, filtered, and retimed network measurements into the representative bandwidth information which has an additive property in an algebraic domain.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the algebraic domain is one of

real-number addition using traffic envelopes as input and calculating the statistical bound considering the number of flows traversing a link;

an effective bandwidth domain calculating a statistical bound on flows traversing a link;

or

min-plus algebra calculating a statistical bound on flows traversing a link using network calculus.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the additive property enables the representative bandwidth information to be used for admission control, overbooking determinations, network planning, and/or dynamic pricing in the network.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the representative bandwidth information is for packet data with variable bandwidth and/or connection-based services with fixed bandwidth.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the representative bandwidth information is based on a traffic envelope representation which is a value that a traffic does not exceed with some probability.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the representative bandwidth information is based on an effective bandwidth representation which has a probabilistic additive property in an effective bandwidth domain.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the representative bandwidth information is based on a service curve representation that uses a min-plus algebra domain.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

utilizing the representative bandwidth information to auto-tune overbooking parameters in the network.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

utilizing the representative bandwidth information for admission control to admit or reject a connection in the network.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

utilizing the representative bandwidth information in network planning to reflect true network usage in the network.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

utilizing the representative bandwidth information to determine a price of a connection in the network.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the representative bandwidth information is determined at various granularity levels in the network from historically observed measurements and future forecasts to automatically adjust overbooking parameters in the network.

17. A server configured to perform a representative bandwidth calculation in a network, the server comprising:

a network interface;

a processor coupled to the network interface; and

memory storing instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to

receive, via the network interface, a request for representative bandwidth information,

obtain network measurements, and

combine, filter, and retimed the network measurements based on the request to determine the representative bandwidth information.

18. The server of claim 17, wherein the combined, filtered, and retimed network measurements are converted into the representative bandwidth information which has an additive property in an algebraic domain.

19. The server of claim 17, wherein the representative bandwidth information is determined at various granularity levels in the network from historically observed measurements and future forecasts to automatically adjust overbooking parameters in the network.

20. The server of claim 17, wherein the server is either a Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller or coupled to an SDN controller.