Method and apparatus for forwarding packet

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10110490-B2
Application number	US-201615243108-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 22, 2016
Priority date	Feb 20, 2014
Publication date	Oct 23, 2018
Grant date	Oct 23, 2018

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for forwarding a packet, where a first network virtualization edge (NVE) receives a first packet sent by a first tenant end system (TES), where a destination Internet Protocol (IP) address of the first packet is an IP address of a second TES, a destination media access control (MAC) address of the first packet is a gateway MAC address corresponding to the first NVE. The first NVE acquires an access virtual network identifier (VN ID) and a layer 3 virtual private network (VPN) instance identifier of the first TES, and searches a routing and forwarding table, to obtain an entry corresponding to the IP address of the second TES. Then the first NVE encapsulates the first packet into a network virtualization overlays (NVO3) packet according to the entry, and forwards the NVO3 packet to a second NVE to forward to the second TES.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for forwarding a packet, comprising:
receiving, by a first network virtualization edge (NVE), a first packet from a first tenant end system (TES), a destination Internet Protocol (IP) address of the first packet being an IP address of a second TES, a destination media access control (MAC) address of the first packet being a gateway MAC address corresponding to the first NVE, and the first TES and the second TES belong to a same layer 3 virtual private network (VPN);
acquiring, by the first NVE, an access virtual network identifier (VN ID) of the first TES according to at least one of information about a port receiving the first packet or information on the first packet from the first TES;
acquiring a layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the first TES according to the access VN ID of the first TES;
performing, by the first NVE, layer 2 termination on the first packet;
searching, according to the IP address of the second TES, a routing and forwarding table corresponding to the layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the first TES, to obtain an entry corresponding to the IP address of the second TES;
encapsulating the first packet into a network virtualization overlays (NVO3) packet according to the entry; and
forwarding, by the first NVE, the NVO3 packet to a second NVE using a layer 3 network, the second TES being connected to the second NVE.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the entry corresponding to the IP address of the second TES comprises:
the IP address of the second TES;
an IP address of the second NVE to which the second TES is connected;
a gateway MAC address corresponding to the second NVE; and
a global VN ID corresponding to a layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the second TES, and
wherein the method further comprises encapsulating, by the first NVE, the first packet into the NVO3 packet according to the IP address of the second NVE, the gateway MAC address corresponding to the second NVE, and the global VN ID corresponding to the layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the second TES.

3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein acquiring the access VN ID of the first TES, and acquiring the layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the first TES comprises:
acquiring, by the first NVE, the access VN ID of the first TES according to at least one of the information about the port receiving the first packet, a layer 2 virtual local area network (VLAN) identifier in the first packet, or a source MAC address of the first packet; and
acquiring the layer 3 VPN instance identifier corresponding to the access VN ID of the first TES.

4. The method according to claim 2 , wherein encapsulating the first packet into the NVO3 packet comprises:
replacing, by the first NVE, the destination MAC address of the first packet with the gateway MAC address corresponding to the second NVE and replacing a source MAC address of the first packet with the gateway MAC address corresponding to the first NVE, to obtain the first packet after replacement; and
encapsulating, by the first NVE, an NVO3 header for the first packet after replacement, to generate the NVO3 packet, a destination IP address in the NVO3 header being the IP address of the second NVE, a source IP address in the NVO3 header being an IP address of the first NVE, and a VN ID in the NVO3 header being the global VN ID corresponding to the layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the second TES.

5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein before receiving, by the first NVE, the first packet from the first TES, the method further comprises locally generating, by the first NVE, a table of a correspondence between access VN IDs and layer 3 VPN instance identifiers, and wherein acquiring the layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the first TES comprises searching, by the first NVE, the table of the correspondence between the access VN IDs and the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers according to the access VN ID of the first TES, to obtain the layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the first TES.

6. The method according to claim 5 , further comprising:
locally generating, by the first NVE, a table of a correspondence between the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers and global VN IDs, the table of the correspondence between the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers and the global VN IDs being used by the first NVE to search for a corresponding layer 3 VPN instance identifier in response to the first NVE receiving an NVO3 packet from another NVE in a network;
generating, by the first NVE, a corresponding routing and forwarding table for each local layer 3 VPN instance identifier using an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and an exterior routing protocol;
sending, by the first NVE to another NVE in the network, an IP address of the first NVE, the gateway MAC address corresponding to the first NVE, the routing and forwarding tables, and the table of the correspondence between the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers and the global VN IDs; and
receiving, from the other NVE, an IP address of the other NVE, a corresponding gateway MAC address of the other NVE, a routing and forwarding table corresponding to each local layer 3 VPN instance identifier of the other NVE device, and the table of the correspondence between the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers and the global VN IDs.

7. A method for forwarding a packet, comprising:
receiving, by a second network virtualization edge (NVE), a network virtualization overlays (NVO3) packet from a first NVE, the NVO3 packet comprising NVO3 encapsulation on a first packet of a first tenant end system (TES), and a destination Internet Protocol (IP) address of the first packet being an IP address of a second TES;
decapsulating, by the second NVE, the NVO3 packet to obtain a decapsulated packet in response to a destination IP address in an NVO3 header of the NVO3 packet being an IP address of the second NVE, the decapsulated packet being obtained based on replacing a destination media access control (MAC) address of the first packet with a gateway MAC address corresponding to the second NVE and replacing a source MAC address of the first packet with a gateway MAC address corresponding to the first NVE;
performing, by the second NVE, layer 2 termination on the decapsulated packet;
acquiring, by the second NVE according to a global virtual network identifier (VN ID) in the NVO3 header of the NVO3 packet, a layer 3 virtual private network (VPN) instance identifier corresponding to the global VN ID;
searching, by the second NVE, a routing and forwarding table according to the layer 3 VPN instance identifier and the IP address of the second TES; and
forwarding the decapsulated packet to the second TES.

8. The method according to claim 7 , wherein before receiving the NVO3 packet, the method further comprises locally generating, by the second NVE, a table of a correspondence between layer 3 VPN instance identifiers and global VN IDs, and wherein acquiring the layer 3 VPN instance identifier corresponding to the global VN ID comprises searching, by the second NVE, the table of the correspondence between the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers and the global VN IDs according to the global VN ID, to obtain the layer 3 VPN instance identifier corresponding to the global VN ID.

9. The method according to claim 8 , further comprising:
locally generating, by the second NVE, a table of a correspondence between access VN IDs and the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers, the table of the correspondence between the access VN IDs and the layer 3 VPN instance identifiers being used by the second NVE to find a corresponding layer 3 VPN instance identifier according to an access VN ID of a TES;
generating, by the second NVE, a corresponding routing and forwarding table for each

Assignees

• Huawei Tech Co Ltd

Inventors

• Hao Weiguo
• Li Yizhou
• Ni Hui
• Huang Shibi

Classifications

• H04L45/64

  using an overlay routing layer · CPC title

• H04L12/4641

  Virtual LANs, VLANs, e.g. virtual private networks [VPN] (LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone H04L12/462; encapsulation techniques H04L12/4633; routing of packets H04L45/00; packet switches H04L49/00; virtual private networks for security H04L63/0272) · CPC title

• H04L61/6022

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L12/4633

  Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling · CPC title

• H04L12/4645

  Details on frame tagging (routing of packets H04L45/00; support for virtual LAN H04L49/354) · CPC title