Network virtualization using just-in-time distributed capability for classification encoding
First Claim
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1. For a forwarding element executed by at least one processing unit of a physical host machine, a method comprising:
- at a first hop forwarding element that receives a packet from a source machine, classifying the packet based on a flow to which the packet belongs;
storing an intermediate result of the packet classification as a context for the flow, wherein the packet classification is performed by a logical pipeline that spans the first hop forwarding element and a destination forwarding element and the intermediate result is produced by the logical pipeline at the first hop forwarding element;
generating a metadata packet for carrying the context of the flow;
transmitting the metadata packet to the destination forwarding element; and
transmitting the packet to the destination forwarding element after the transmission of the metadata packet.
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Abstract
A method for providing a “just-in-time” distributed capability for classification encoding is described. When a source transport node processes a new flow (a flow for the first time), the source transport node in some embodiments sends a metadata packet “just-in-time” to the destination transport node to propagate the classification encoding to use for the given flow.
198 Citations
18 Claims
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1. For a forwarding element executed by at least one processing unit of a physical host machine, a method comprising:
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at a first hop forwarding element that receives a packet from a source machine, classifying the packet based on a flow to which the packet belongs; storing an intermediate result of the packet classification as a context for the flow, wherein the packet classification is performed by a logical pipeline that spans the first hop forwarding element and a destination forwarding element and the intermediate result is produced by the logical pipeline at the first hop forwarding element; generating a metadata packet for carrying the context of the flow; transmitting the metadata packet to the destination forwarding element; and transmitting the packet to the destination forwarding element after the transmission of the metadata packet. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. For a forwarding element executed by at least one processing unit of a host machine, a method comprising:
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at the forwarding element, receiving a metadata packet from a first hop forwarding element for packets of a particular flow, wherein the metadata packet comprises a set of parameters that identifies the particular flow and carries a context from the first hop forwarding element; storing the context of the flow in a table at the forwarding element by using the set of parameters that identifies the flow as an index, the table storing a plurality of contexts for a plurality of different flows; receiving a packet belonging to the flow, from the first hop forwarding element and using a set of parameters in the received packet as an index to retrieve the stored context from the table; and using the stored context to perform packet classification operation on the received packet. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A computing device comprising:
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a set of processing units; a non-transitory machine readable medium storing virtualization software that when executed by at least one of the processing units performs a portion of a packet classification operation for a set of packets belonging to a particular flow and generates a context based on the performed portion of the packet classification operation; and a physical network interface controller (NIC) that transmits a metadata packet and the set of packets over a physical network to another computing device, wherein the metadata packet comprises the generated context for the other computing device to complete the packet classification operation for the set of data packets belonging to the particular flow. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18)
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Specification