CONNECTION IDENTIFIER ASSIGNMENT AND SOURCE NETWORK ADDRESS TRANSLATION

• US 20130128891A1
• Filed: 11/15/2012
• Published: 05/23/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/15/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nicira Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Koponen, Teemu, Zhang, Ronghua, Thakkar, Pankaj, Casado, Martin
• Granted Patent: US 8,913,611 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/392
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/177 Initialisation or configuration control processor initialisation G06F9/4405
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/455 Emulation; Interpretation; Software simulation, e.g. virtualisation or emulation of application or operating system execution engines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/08 Configuration management of networks or network elements address allocation H04L61/50
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0803 Configuration setting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0806 for initial configuration or provisioning, e.g. plug-and-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0813 characterised by the conditions triggering a change of settings
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0823 characterised by the purposes of a change of settings, e.g. optimising configuration for enhancing reliability for optimising operational conditions of wireless networks H04W24/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0889 Techniques to speed-up the configuration process
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0894 Policy-based network configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0895 Configuration of virtualised networks or elements, e.g. virtualised network function or OpenFlow elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/02 Topology update or discovery
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/64 using an overlay routing layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/74 Address processing for routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/15 Interconnection of switching modules
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/70 : Virtual switches
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2503 : Translation of Internet protocol [IP] addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2517 : using port numbers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/2521 : Translation architectures other than single NAT servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/256 : NAT traversal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0218 : Distributed architectures, e.g. distributed firewalls
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 : based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30

Abstract

A controller of a network control system for configuring several middlebox instances is described. The middlebox instances implement a middlebox in a distributed manner in several hosts. The controller assigns a first set of identifiers to a first middlebox instance that associates an identifier in the first set with a first packet. The controller assigns a second set of identifiers to a second middlebox instance that associates an identifier in the second set with a second packet.

Claims

1. A non-transitory machine readable medium of a controller of a network control system for configuring a plurality of middlebox instances to implement a middlebox in a distributed manner in a plurality of hosts, the non-transitory machine readable medium storing sets of instructions for:

assigning a first set of identifiers to a first middlebox instance that associates an identifier in the first set with a first packet; and

assigning a second set of identifiers to a second middlebox instance that associates an identifier in the second set with a second packet.

2. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein none of the identifiers in the first set is identical with any identifier in the second set.

3. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first packet and the second packet have identical source network address and identical destination network address.

4. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein a number of identifiers in the first set is different than a number of identifiers in the second set.

5. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first middlebox instance associates the identifier in the first set with the first packet by replacing a source port number of the first packet with the identifier in the first set.

6. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein at least one of the identifiers in the first set is identical with one of the identifiers in the second set.

7. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first set of identifiers and the second set of identifiers are identical sets.

8. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the identifier in the first set and the identifier in the second set are identical.

9. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first packet and the second packet have different destination addresses.

10. A non-transitory machine readable medium of a controller of a network control system for configuring a plurality of middlebox instances to implement a middlebox in a distributed manner in a plurality of hosts, the non-transitory machine readable medium storing sets of instructions for:

receiving a request for a first set of identifiers from a first middlebox instance;

determining whether the first set of identifiers are available; and

when the first set of identifiers are available, assigning the first set of identifiers to the first middlebox instance.

11. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 10, wherein the sets of instructions further comprise a set of instructions for:

after assigning the first set of identifiers to the first middlebox instance, recording that the first set of identifiers are not available.

12. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 10, wherein the sets of instructions further comprise a set of instructions for:

when the first set of identifiers are not available, sending a message indicating the first set of identifiers are not available to the first middlebox instance.

13. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 10, wherein the sets of instructions further comprise sets of instructions for:

receiving a request to release a second set of identifiers from a second middlebox instance; and

recording that the second set of identifiers are available.

14. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 10, wherein the sets of instructions further comprise sets of instructions for:

after assigning the first set of identifiers to the first middlebox instance, determining whether the first middlebox instance is alive; and

when the first middle instance is not alive, recording that the first set of identifiers are available.

15. A non-transitory machine readable medium of a first controller of a network control system for configuring a plurality of middlebox instances to implement a middlebox in a distributed manner in a plurality of hosts, the network control system comprising a plurality of controllers, the non-transitory machine readable medium storing sets of instructions for:

receiving configuration data for configuring the middlebox instances to provide source network address translation (SNAT) service to packets coming to the middlebox instances;

identifying a set of other controllers in the network control system that manage the middlebox instances; and

directing the identified set of other controllers to send the configuration data to the middlebox instances.

16. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the configuration data include a set of addresses to which the middlebox instances translate source network address of the packets.

17. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the first controller is a logical controller and the identified set of other controllers are physical controllers.

18. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the network control system is for generating physical control plane data for managing first and second managed forwarding elements that implement forwarding operations associated with a first logical datapath set, wherein the sets of instructions further comprise a set of instructions for converting logical control plane data for the first logical datapath set to universal physical control plane data.

19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 18, wherein the first controller is a master controller for the first logical datapath set, wherein each of the identified set of other controllers is a master controller for a set of managed forwarding elements that are hosted in the same middlebox instances in which the middlebox instances are hosted.

20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 15, wherein the configuration data include at least one mapping of a pair of addresses.