VIRTUAL NETWORK PROVIDER

• US 20190103991A1
• Filed: 05/04/2018
• Published: 04/04/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/02/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Cidon, Israel, Dar, Chen, Venugopal, Prashanth
• Granted Patent: US 10,594,516 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/14 Charging , metering or billing arrangements for data wireline or wireless communications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1403 Architecture for metering, charging or billing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1428 Invoice generation, e.g. customization, lay-out, database processing, algorithms for calculating the bill or formatting invoices as WWW pages invoicing in general G06Q30/04
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2854 Wide area networks, e.g. public data networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2859 Point-to-point connection between the data network and the subscribers encapsulation H04L12/4633; virtual LANs H04L12/4641; routing of packets H04L45/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4641 Virtual LANs, VLANs, e.g. virtual private networks [VPN] LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone H04L12/462; encapsulation techniques H04L12/4633; routing of packets H04L45/00; packet switches H04L49/00; virtual private networks for security H04L63/0272
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/35 containing special prefixes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2212/00 Encapsulation of packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0803 Configuration setting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0829 Packet loss
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0888 Throughput
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/04 Interdomain routing, e.g. hierarchical routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/12 Shortest path evaluation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/14 Routing performance; Theoretical aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/64 : using an overlay routing layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/74 : Address processing for routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/745 : Address table lookup; Address filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/25 : of the same type
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2514 : between local and global IP addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/255 : Maintenance or indexing of mapping tables
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 : using domain name system [DNS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0245 : Filtering by information in the payload
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0263 : Rule management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0272 : Virtual private networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0281 : Proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 : for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 : in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/00 : Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/51 : for resellers, retailers or service providers

Abstract

Some embodiments establish for an entity a virtual network over several public clouds of several public cloud providers and/or in several regions. In some embodiments, the virtual network is an overlay network that spans across several public clouds to interconnect one or more private networks (e.g., networks within branches, divisions, departments of the entity or their associated datacenters), mobile users, and SaaS (Software as a Service) provider machines, and other web applications of the entity. The virtual network in some embodiments can be configured to optimize the routing of the entity'"'"'s data messages to their destinations for best end-to-end performance, reliability and security, while trying to minimize the routing of this traffic through the Internet. Also, the virtual network in some embodiments can be configured to optimize the layer 4 processing of the data message flows passing through the network.

Claims

1. A system for establishing different virtual networks for different entities over a plurality of public cloud datacenters of a plurality of public cloud providers, the system comprising:

a first set of forwarding elements in a first multi-tenant public cloud datacenter operated by a first public cloud provider;

a second set of forwarding elements in a second multi-tenant public cloud datacenter operated by a second public cloud provider different than the first public cloud provider;

a set of controllers to configure the first and second set of forwarding elements (i) to implement for a first entity a first virtual network that spans the first and second public cloud datacenters, and (ii) to implement for a second entity a second virtual network that spans the first and second public cloud datacenters.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the first and second public cloud datacenters are in different geographic regions.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the entities are corporations and the first and second virtual networks are first and second virtual wide area networks (WANs) for the first and second corporations.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the first virtual WAN connects offices, datacenters, and remote devices of the first corporation, while the second virtual WAN connects offices, datacenters, and remote devices of the second corporation.

5. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a third set of forwarding elements in a third multi-tenant public cloud datacenter operated by the first public cloud provider;

wherein the set of controllers configures the third set of forwarding elements to implement the first virtual network so that the first virtual network also spans the third public cloud datacenters;

wherein each of a plurality of data message flows of the first entity passes from the first public cloud datacenter to the third public cloud datacenter and then to the second public cloud datacenter to traverse from (1) a first machine that is outside of the public cloud datacenters and that connects to a forwarding element in the first set of forwarding elements, to (2) a second machine that is outside of the public cloud datacenters and that connects to a forwarding element in the second set of forwarding elements.

6. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a third set of forwarding elements in a third multi-tenant public cloud datacenter operated by a third public cloud provider;

wherein the set of controllers configures the third set of forwarding elements to implement the first virtual network so that the first virtual network also spans the third public cloud datacenters;

wherein each of a plurality of data message flows of the first entity passes from the first public cloud datacenter to the third public cloud datacenter and then to the second public cloud datacenter to traverse from (1) a first machine that is outside of the public cloud datacenters and that connects to a forwarding element in the first set of forwarding elements, to (2) a second machine that is outside of the public cloud datacenters and that connects to a forwarding element in the second set of forwarding elements.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of controllers are in the first public cloud datacenter.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of controllers are in the first and second public cloud datacenters.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein a subset of controllers in the first public cloud datacenter synchronize at least a portion of configuration data for configuring the forwarding elements with a subset of controllers in the second public cloud datacenter.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of controllers are in a datacenter other than the first and second datacenters.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of controllers configure the forwarding elements by providing routes for traversing the first and second public cloud datacenters from ingress forwarding elements that receive data message flows from machines belonging to the entities that are outside of the public cloud datacenters to egress forwarding elements that forward data message flows to machines belonging to the entities that are outside of the public cloud datacenters.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of controllers configure the forwarding elements by providing tenant identifiers for identifying the first and second entities, the forwarding elements embedding the tenant identifiers in headers that encapsulate the data message flows of the entities that pass through the respective virtual networks of the entities.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of controllers further periodically computes costs for deploying first and second virtual networks and generates billing reports to charge the first and second entities for the computed costs.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the computed costs include costs for consuming network bandwidth in the first and second public cloud datacenters.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein

at least a subset of the first and second forwarding elements are software forwarding elements executing on host computers in the first and second public cloud datacenters, and

the computed costs include costs for consuming resources on the host computers on which the software forwarding elements execute.

16. The system of claim 13, wherein the computed costs are calculated by accounting charges to the virtual network provider by the first and second public cloud providers and adding to the charges a particular rate of return for the virtual network provider.

17. The system of claim 13, wherein the set of controllers are further for deploying compute node machines in at least one of the public cloud datacenters for at least one entity.

18. The system of claim 13, wherein the set of controllers are further for deploying service machines in at least one of the public cloud datacenters for at least one entity, said service machines for providing middlebox service operations for the entity.

19. The system of claim 1, wherein the first virtual network connects a plurality of machines of the first entity that operate outside of the first and second public cloud datacenters, and the second virtual network connects a plurality of machines of the second entity that operate outside of the first and second public cloud datacenters.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the plurality machine of the first entity includes machines operating in at least one office location, at least one datacenter location, and a plurality of remote user locations.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the plurality machine of the first entity further includes a plurality of machines of a SaaS (Software as a Service) provider of the first entity.