CONGESTION NOTIFICATION REPORTING FOR A RESPONSIVE NETWORK

• US 20200136972A1
• Filed: 10/27/2018
• Published: 04/30/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 10/27/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: NGUYEN, Dennis Khoa Dang, MANJUNATHAN SWARNAMANJUNATHAN, Keerthi, SHARPLESS, Laura J., CHAN, Kelvin, DEVADAS, Ganga S.
• Granted Patent: US 11,057,305 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0823 characterised by the purposes of a change of settings, e.g. optimising configuration for enhancing reliability for optimising operational conditions of wireless networks H04W24/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/06 Generation of reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/062 related to network traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/11 Identifying congestion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/12 Avoiding congestion; Recovering from congestion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/122 by diverting traffic away from congested entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/25 Routing or path finding in a switch fabric
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/50 Overload detection or protection within a single switching element
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0055 Physical resource allocation for ACK/NACK for physical mapping arrangements in ARQ protocols H04L1/1861

Abstract

Techniques for identifying network congestion and adapting network performance to relieve the network congestion are described. As described, a network element such as a switch reports network congestion indicators such as link level control frames to a network controller. The network controller uses the network congestion indicators reported from the network elements to identify congestion points, data traffic, and data flows experiencing congestion at a network level. The network controller then determines optimized control parameters for the network in order to reduce or alleviate the congestion at the congestion points.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, at a network switch, network congestion indicators for data traffic;

replicating the network congestion indicators for transmission to a network controller;

transmitting the replicated network congestion indicators to the network controller;

receiving optimized network control parameters for the data traffic from the network controller; and

executing the optimized network control parameters for the data traffic at the network switch.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the network congestion indicators comprise one or more link level frames, wherein the link level frames comprise one or more of:

a PAUSE frame received from another network switch;

an acknowledgment (ACK) frame received from the another network switch; and

a link control frame received from the another network switch.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein replicating the network congestion indicators for transmission to the network controller comprises:

parsing the one or more link level frames;

identifying eligible link level frames from the one or more parsed link level frames;

selecting, using selection criteria parameters, one or more eligible link level frames for replication;

replicating the selected link level frames using an Encapsulated Remote Switched Port Analyzer (ERSPAN) session on the network switch;

adding one or more designators to the replicated link level frames; and

encapsulating the replicated link level frames into an ERSPAN packet.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the one or more designators comprises one or more of:

a port identification;

a traffic class designation; and

a timestamp.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the selection criteria parameters comprise one or more of:

a sampling interval;

a frame protocol;

a message category;

an affected port; and

an affected class.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

aggregating network flow control information; and

transmitting the aggregated network flow control information to the network controller.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein executing the optimized network control parameters for the data traffic at the network switch comprises:

updating quality of service parameters at the network switch;

updating congestion management protocol parameters; and

updating a path for new data flow or an existing data flow.

8. A computer program product, the computer program product comprising:

a computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied therewith, the computer-readable program code executable by one or more computer processors to perform an operation, the operation comprising;

receiving, at a network switch, network congestion indicators for data traffic;

replicating the network congestion indicators for transmission to a network controller;

transmitting the replicated network congestion indicators to the network controller;

receiving optimized network control parameters for the data traffic from the network controller; and

executing the optimized network control parameters for the data traffic at the network switch.

9. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein the network congestion indicators comprise one or more link level frames, wherein the link level frames comprise one or more of:

a PAUSE frame received from another network switch;

an acknowledgment (ACK) frame received from the another network switch; and

a link control frame received from the another network switch.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein replicating the network congestion indicators for transmission to the network controller comprises:

parsing the one or more link level frames;

identifying eligible link level frames from the one or more parsed link level frames;

selecting, using selection criteria parameters;

one or more eligible link level frames for replication;

replicating the selected link level frames using an Encapsulated Remote Switched Port Analyzer (ERSPAN) session on the network switch;

adding one or more designators to the replicated link level frames; and

encapsulating the replicated link level frames into a ERSPAN packet.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the one or more designators comprises one or more of:

a port identification;

a traffic class designation; and

a time stamp.

12. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the selection criteria parameters comprise one or more of:

a sampling interval;

a frame protocol;

a message category;

an affected port; and

an affected class.

13. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein the operation further comprises:

aggregating network flow control information; and

transmitting the aggregated network flow control information to the network controller.

14. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein executing the optimized network control parameters for the data traffic at the network switch comprises:

updating quality of service parameters at the network switch;

updating congestion management protocol parameters; and

updating a switch selection for new data flow.

15. A method comprising:

receiving, at a network controller for a network, replicated network congestion indicators for data traffic from a reporting network element;

identifying from the replicated network congestion indicators network congestion conditions for the data traffic;

determining, from the network congestion indicators, one or more congestion points in the network;

determining optimized control parameters for the network to mitigate the one or more congestion points in the network; and

broadcasting the optimized control parameters to one or more network switches.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein identifying the network congestion conditions for the data traffic further comprises:

parsing the network congestion indicators according to an encapsulation format;

extracting one or more designators from the parsed network congestion indicators;

extracting one or more link level frames from the parsed network congestion indicators;

identifying one or more network congestion condition from the one or more designators and one or more link level frames; and

storing the network congestion conditions as network congestion events.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein determining the one or more congestion points in the network comprises:

determining from the network congestion indicators and stored network congestion events one or more congestion patterns for the network;

grouping the congestion patterns for the network according to time and location information; and

determining, from the congestion patterns for the network, the one or more congestion points.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein determining the optimized control parameters for the network to mitigate the one or more congestion points in the network comprises:

identifying one or more data flows utilizing the one or more congestion points;

determining alternate routes for the one or more data flows to bypass the one or more congestion points in the network;

determining one or more updated traffic parameters for the network; and

storing the one or more updated traffic parameters and the alternate routes as the optimized control parameters.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the one or more updated traffic parameters comprises one or more of:

updated quality of service parameters for the one or more congestion points; and

updated congestion management protocol parameters for the one or more congestion points, wherein the updated congestion management protocol parameters comprise one or more of;

an updated PAUSA quanta;

an updated reassertion interval;

an updated buffer allocation;

and updated scheduling priority; and

an updated reassertion threshold.

20. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

storing the one or more congestion points and one or more congestion conditions in a congestion database;

receiving replicated network congestion indicators for additional data traffic;

correlating the network congestion indicators with stored congestion data in the congestion database;

identifying network congestion actors from the correlation; and

transmitting the identified network congestion actors to a network administrator.