Network aware application management

• US 8,825,820 B2
• Filed: 09/18/2009
• Issued: 09/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Gerber, Alexandre, Lund, Carsten, Van der Merwe, Jacobus
• Primary Examiner(s): Gillis, Brian J
• Application Number:
  US12/562,826
• Publication Number:
  US 20110072127A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,810 Days
• Field of Search: 709/223, 709/224, 709/226, 709/229, 709/235, 709/242
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3003 Monitoring arrangements specially adapted to the computing system or computing system component being monitored
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3051 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3466 Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring
• 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 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5682 Policies or rules for updating, deleting or replacing the stored data

Abstract

A method of managing a network application includes identifying a network path for the network application, obtaining network performance measurements along the network path, obtaining application performance information for the network application, and extracting infrastructure specific information for the infrastructure supporting the network application. The method further includes correlating the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify a performance issue affecting the network application, and modifying the application behavior, the network behavior, or any combination thereof in response to the performance issue.

Claims

1. A method of managing a network application, comprising:

identifying a network path for the network application;

obtaining network performance measurements along the network path;

obtaining application performance information for the network application;

extracting infrastructure specific information for infrastructure supporting the network application;

correlating the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify a performance issue affecting the network application; and

in response to the performance issue;

modifying a behavior of the application;

modifying a behavior of a network element of the network path; and

modifying the infrastructure specific information.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying a network path includes collecting flow level information from a plurality of network elements and filtering based on traffic characteristics to identify which network elements comprise the network path.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the network performance measurements include one of bandwidth utilization, link capacity, packet queue utilization, and any combination thereof.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the application performance information includes one of a number of dropped packets, response time, latency, data transfer rates, and any combination thereof.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein modifying the behavior of the application includes modifying a request allocation to direct requests away from a malfunctioning server.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein modifying the behavior of the network element includes modifying routing tables to direct traffic around a congested network component.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the network application comprises a content delivery network application.

8. A system for managing a network application, comprising:

a network mapping module that at least identifies a network path for the network application;

a network performance module that at least;

obtains network performance measurements along the network path; and

obtains infrastructure specific information for infrastructure supporting the network application;

an application performance module that at least obtains application performance information;

a hardware implemented correlation module that at least correlates the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify an application performance issue; and

an issue response module that at least responds to the application performance issue to;

modify a behavior of the application;

modify a behavior of a network element of the network path; and

modify the infrastructure specific information.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein identifying a network path includes collecting flow level information from a plurality of network elements and filtering based on traffic characteristics to identify which network elements comprise the network path.

10. The system of claim 8 wherein the network performance measurements include one of bandwidth utilization, link capacity, packet queue utilization, and any combination thereof.

11. The system of claim 8 wherein the infrastructure specific information includes one of processor utilization, memory utilization, storage utilization, number of concurrent processes, number of concurrent connections, and any combination thereof.

12. The system of claim 8, further comprising modifying a behavior of the application, wherein modifying the behavior of the application includes modifying the request allocation of an application to direct requests away from a malfunctioning server.

13. The system of claim 8 wherein modifying the behavior of the network element includes modifying a routing tables of the network element to direct traffic around a congested network component.

14. The system of claim 8 wherein the network application comprises a real time multicast application.

15. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising a plurality of instructions to manipulate a processor, the plurality of instructions comprising:

instructions to identify a network path for a network application;

instructions to obtain network performance measurements along the network path;

instructions to obtain application performance information for the network application;

instructions to obtain infrastructure specific information for infrastructure supporting the network application; and

instructions to correlate the application performance information, network performance measurements, and the infrastructure specific information to identify a performance issue related to the network application;

instructions to modify a behavior of the application in response to the application performance issue;

instructions to modify a behavior of a network element of the network path in response to the application performance issue; and

instructions to modify the infrastructure specific information in response to the application performance issue.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein identifying a network path includes one of (i) calculating a network path based on an ingress point, an egress point, and network routing information, and (ii) collecting flow level information from a plurality of network elements and filtering based on traffic characteristics to identify which network elements comprise the network path.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein the application performance information includes one of a number of dropped packets, response time, latency, data transfer rates, and any combination thereof.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein the infrastructure specific information includes one of processor utilization, memory utilization, storage utilization, number of concurrent processes, number of concurrent connections, and any combination thereof.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein modifying the behavior of the application includes modifying the request allocation of an application to direct requests away from a malfunctioning server.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein the network application comprises an online gaming application.