Distributed network management
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A method of providing information for managing an autonomous IP network comprised of hosts on which applications execute and exchange IP packets and routers that route the IP packets between the hosts, the method comprising:
- providing access to flow information about instances of communication between the hosts over the autonomous IP network, the flow information having been captured by the hosts as the communication occurred, and where the hosts are on the edge of the autonomous IP network and are not routers, the flow information comprising a plurality of traffic flows, the traffic flows having been obtained by, for any given host;
monitoring the transmission and receipt of IP packets on the given host to capture packet data as IP packets are sent and received on the host, and synthesizing the captured packet data to form and store the plurality of traffic flows, each traffic flow corresponding to a plurality of the IP packets that were all sent or received by a same application between a same source IP address and a same destination IP address via a same protocol or port, each traffic flow including a packet count or cumulative packet size of the IP packets in the corresponding plurality;
providing access to information describing the topology of the autonomous IP network, where the information about the topology is based on or comprises routing paths derived from routing information collected from the routers of the autonomous IP network, each routing path comprising two endpoint IP addresses of a pair of the hosts in the autonomous IP network and comprising one or more intermediary IP addresses of routers that routed some of the IP packets between the endpoint IP addresses; and
answering queries about the autonomous IP network and the host by using both the collected routes and the collected flows, wherein a query is answered by correlating one or more traffic flows with one or more routing paths describing routes that carried the IP packets corresponding to the one or more traffic flows.
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Abstract
Hosts or end-systems residing at the edges of a network gather data about the traffic they transmit into and receive from the network. The network'"'"'s routing protocol (typically a link-state protocol such as OSPF) is monitored and routing data or packets are used to recover the network'"'"'s current status and topology. This data can be collected, fused, and maintained and a platform, preferably distributed, can be provided to query the data, thus enabling a variety of network management applications.
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Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method of providing information for managing an autonomous IP network comprised of hosts on which applications execute and exchange IP packets and routers that route the IP packets between the hosts, the method comprising:
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providing access to flow information about instances of communication between the hosts over the autonomous IP network, the flow information having been captured by the hosts as the communication occurred, and where the hosts are on the edge of the autonomous IP network and are not routers, the flow information comprising a plurality of traffic flows, the traffic flows having been obtained by, for any given host; monitoring the transmission and receipt of IP packets on the given host to capture packet data as IP packets are sent and received on the host, and synthesizing the captured packet data to form and store the plurality of traffic flows, each traffic flow corresponding to a plurality of the IP packets that were all sent or received by a same application between a same source IP address and a same destination IP address via a same protocol or port, each traffic flow including a packet count or cumulative packet size of the IP packets in the corresponding plurality; providing access to information describing the topology of the autonomous IP network, where the information about the topology is based on or comprises routing paths derived from routing information collected from the routers of the autonomous IP network, each routing path comprising two endpoint IP addresses of a pair of the hosts in the autonomous IP network and comprising one or more intermediary IP addresses of routers that routed some of the IP packets between the endpoint IP addresses; and answering queries about the autonomous IP network and the host by using both the collected routes and the collected flows, wherein a query is answered by correlating one or more traffic flows with one or more routing paths describing routes that carried the IP packets corresponding to the one or more traffic flows. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
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5. A method of providing information about a network, the method comprising:
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receiving a query; searching flow data self-captured by hosts in the network as the hosts communicate with each other over the network, the hosts not configured to perform general purpose transit type IP routing, the flow data comprising individual packet statistics of sets of packets transmitted and received by the hosts in the network, each set of packets consisting of only packets sent or received by a particular application on a particular host to or from another particular host on the network; accessing stored topology information that describes the topology of the network according to routing information captured from routers in the network or information derived therefrom; finding in the topology information routes in the network by which the packets corresponding to the one or more packet statistics were routed; and generating an answer to the query using at least some of the packet statistics and the found routes and transmitting the answer to the query via the network. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A method of answering queries about an IP network comprised of hosts and routers with IP addresses in the IP network, the method comprising:
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receiving and storing in a database a plurality of traffic flows from hosts in the IP network, the traffic flows having been obtained by the hosts by, for any given host; monitoring the transmission and receipt of packets on the given host to capture packet data as the packets are sent and received on the host, and synthesizing the captured packet data to form and store a plurality of traffic flows, each traffic flow corresponding to a plurality of the packets that were all sent or received by a same application between a same source IP address and a same destination IP address via a same protocol or port, each traffic flow including a packet count or cumulative packet size of the packets in the corresponding plurality; receiving and storing in the database, in association with the traffic flows, a plurality of routing paths, each routing path comprising two endpoint IP addresses of a pair of the hosts in the IP network and comprising one or more intermediary IP addresses of routers that routed some of the packets between the endpoint IP addresses, the plurality of routes having been derived from routing updates transmitted by the routers of the IP network; receiving a query to the database, and providing an answer to the query by searching for a traffic flow that matches the query and by searching for a routing path that matches the traffic flow. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17)
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Specification