Selective routing to geographically distributed network centers for purposes of power control and environmental impact

• US 8,798,071 B2
• Filed: 08/31/2012
• Issued: 08/05/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/10/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Juniper Networks Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Juniper Networks Incorporated
• Inventors: Palmer, Matthew, Watsen, Kent A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Zhu, Alvin
• Application Number:
  US13/600,998
• Publication Number:
  US 20130003743A1
• Time in Patent Office: 704 Days
• Field of Search: 370/238, 370/389, 370/395.31, 370/395.32
• US Class Current: 370/395.21
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/00 Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks routing or path finding in wireless networks H04W40/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/127 based on intermediate node capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/655 Interaction between route computation entities and forwarding entities, e.g. for route determination or for flow table update

Abstract

In general, this disclosure describes techniques of selecting routes for network packets through a computer network based, at least in part, on electrical power procurement arrangements of devices in the computer network. A computing system includes a hardware processor and a database storing power procurement profiles. Each of the power procurement profiles stores data indicating an arrangement between an operator of one or more of routing devices to procure electrical power from a utility company for facilities in which the routing devices are located. The power procurement profiles are mapped to ranges of network addresses associated with the facilities for retrieval of the power procurement profiles for the routers based on the network addresses assigned to the routers.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a computing system having a hardware processor and a database storing power procurement profiles,

wherein each of the power procurement profiles stores data indicating an arrangement between an operator of one or more of routing devices and a utility company to procure electrical power from the utility company for powering facilities in which the routing devices are located,

wherein the power procurement profiles are mapped to ranges of network addresses associated with the facilities for retrieval of the power procurement profiles based on the network addresses assigned to the routers.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the database is a centrally accessible database maintained by a governmental agency for a plurality of different energy providers.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the database is a maintained by the utility company.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing system communicates the power procurement profiles to the routers based on the network addresses assigned to the routers.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the power procurement profiles are communicated to the routers by routing protocol messages in accordance with a routing protocol.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the power procurement profiles indicates a type of fuel used by the utility company to generate the electrical power for the facilities that houses the routing devices to which the power procurement profile is mapped.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the power procurement profiles indicates environmental effects associated with the generation of the electrical power for the facilities that houses the routing devices to which the power procurement profile is mapped.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the environmental effects include relative amounts of greenhouse gasses released when the utility companies generated the electrical power provided to the facilities.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the routers comprise:

a set of one or more network interfaces;

at least one routing protocol process executing on a processor, wherein the routing protocol process receives routing protocol messages in a network in accordance with a routing protocol, wherein the routing protocol messages including one or more of the power procurement profiles;

a route selection module that selects routes that traverse the routing devices of the network based, at least in part, on the power procurement profiles; and

a packet forwarding engine that forwards network packets along the selected routes.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a plurality of policies that define enterprise preferences for selecting routes based on the power procurement profiles mapped to the routers along the routes.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the route selection module automatically selects the routes at least in part by (i) constructing a graph of the network based on topology information indicated by the routing protocol messages, wherein nodes in the graph represent the routers and edges in the graph represent network links between devices in the network;

(ii) calculating costs of edges in the graph based, at least in part, on the type of fuels used by the utility company to generate the electrical power provided to the routers as specified by the power procurement profiles;

(iii) using the costs of the edges to calculate costs associated with one or more routes in the set of routes; and

(iv) selecting a lowest-cost route in the set of routes, wherein the lowest-cost route is associated with a cost that is less than costs associated with other routes in the set of routes.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the routing protocol comprises a link state routing protocol.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the routing protocol comprises one of the Interior Gateway Protocol (“

IGP”

), the Open Shortest Path First (“

OSPF”

) routing protocol, or the Border Gateway Routing Protocol (“

BGP”

).

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing system comprises a domain name system (DNS) server.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein the DNS server selects a network address to which to resolve a Universal Resource Locator (“

URL”

), wherein the DNS servers selects the network address by computing a cost for reaching the network address based on the power procurement profiles.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the facilities comprises data centers.