Method and system for collecting topology information

• US 9,397,895 B2
• Filed: 12/13/2012
• Issued: 07/19/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Viavi Solutions, Inc. (Lumentum Holdings Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Viavi Solutions, Inc. (Lumentum Holdings Inc.)
• Inventors: Page, John M., Bauer, Samuel M., Hsueh, Canning, Stevens, Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): Renner, Brandon
• Assistant Examiner(s): Belur, Deepa
• Application Number:
  US13/714,036
• Publication Number:
  US 20130148547A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,314 Days
• Field of Search: 370/255
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/622 Layer-2 addresses, e.g. medium access control [MAC] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/20 Hop count for routing purposes, e.g. TTL
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/00 Reducing energy consumption in communication networks

Abstract

A method of providing topology information about a network to a topology manager is disclosed. The network includes a plurality of sensors each having a sensor ID, and the method includes performing the following steps at each of the plurality of sensors: receiving a stream of packets and identifying a topology trace packet in the stream of packets, wherein the topology trace packet has a destination address and an ID of a previous sensor, including the sensor ID in the topology trace packet, sending the topology trace packet to the destination address, forming a report message so as to include the sensor ID, the previous sensor ID, sending the report to the topology manager; and, providing network addresses of adjacent nodes to the topology manager.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a first sensor of a network, a stream of packets,

identifying, by the first sensor, a topology trace packet in the stream of packets,

the topology trace packet including;

a destination address, and

a second sensor ID, of a second sensor of the network, in a payload of the topology trace packet,

modifying, by the first sensor, the topology trace packet to include a first sensor ID, of the first sensor, in the payload,

sending, by the first sensor and after modifying the topology trace packet, the topology trace packet to the destination address,

forming, by the first sensor, a report that includes the first sensor ID, the second sensor ID, and Time-To-Live (TTL) data, and

sending, by the first sensor, the report to a topology manager to provide the topology manager with information about spatial relation between the first sensor and the second sensor.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing, by the first sensor and to the topology manager, network addresses of devices adjacent to the first sensor.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

capturing a plurality of packets at the first sensor,

sending copies of the plurality of packets to the topology manager, and

forwarding the plurality of packets to destination addresses associated with the plurality of packets.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the TTL data includes a time-to-live (TTL) value of the topology trace packet for enabling the topology manager to calculate a distance between the first sensor and the second sensor.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the report further includes a MAC source address of the topology trace packet.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the first senor and the second sensor are addressless devices.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein sending the report to the topology manager includes using a source IP address of the topology trace packet.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

capturing a control packet conforming to a control protocol, and

sending at least a portion of the control packet to the topology manager to provide the topology manager with information about remote devices.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the control protocol is one of an ICMP Router Discovery Protocol, a Link Layer Discovery Protocol, a Logical link control protocol, a Cisco Discovery Protocol, a Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), a Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP), or an Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP).

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

sending, by the first sensor, a router discovery solicitation message to obtain the information about remote devices.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, by the first sensor, requests from the topology manager to start topology filtering.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving the report at the topology manager, and

constructing a partial topology representation based on information obtained from the report.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, by the topology manager, a plurality of reports that include the report, and

combining, by the topology manager and based on the plurality of reports, partial topology representations to form a combined topology representation of the network.

14. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the report includes information regarding a number of hops between the first sensor and the second sensor.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions, the instructions comprising:

one or more instructions that, when executed by a first sensor of a network, cause the first sensor to;

receive a stream of packets,

identify a topology trace packet in the stream of packets,

the topology trace packet including;

a destination address, and

a second sensor ID, of a second sensor of the network, in a payload of the topology trace packet,

modify the topology trace packet to include a first sensor ID, of the first sensor, in the payload,

send, after modifying the topology trace packet, the modified topology trace packet to the destination address,

form a report that includes the first sensor ID, the second sensor ID, and Time-To-Live (TTL) data, and

send the report to a topology manager to provide the topology manager with information about spatial relation between the first sensor and the second sensor.

19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, where the one or more instructions to modify the topology trace packet comprise:

one or more instruction that, when executed by the first sensor, cause the firs sensor to;

modify the payload of the topology trace packet without modifying a header of the topology trace packet.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, where the one or more instructions further cause the first sensor to:

determine a TTL value of the topology trace packet, and

determine the TTL data based the TTL value.

16. A system comprising:

a first sensor being associated with a first sensor ID and configured to;

receive a stream of packets;

identifying a topology trace packet in the stream of packets,

the topology trace packet including;

a destination IP address, and

a second sensor ID, of a second sensor, in a payload of the topology trace packet,

modify the topology trace packet to include the first sensor ID in the topology trace packet,

send, after modifying the topology trace packet, the topology trace packet to the destination IP address,

form a repot message that includes the first sensor ID, the second sensor ID, and Time-To-Live (TTL) data, and

send the report message to a topology manager.

17. The system of claim 16, where the topology manager is configured to:

receive a plurality of report that includes the report message,

form, based on the plurality of reports, a topology representation of a network based on sensor IDs obtained from the reports,

the sensor IDs including the first sensor ID and the second sensor ID.

18. The system of claim 16, where, when identifying the topology trace packet, the first sensor is configured to:

identify a pattern in the topology trace packet,

determine that the pattern matches an authentication pattern stored in a memory of the first sensor, and

identify the topology trace packet based on determining that the pattern matches the authentication pattern.