Systems and methods for performing traffic engineering through network slices

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10129894-B2
Application number	US-201615061570-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 4, 2016
Priority date	Mar 4, 2016
Publication date	Nov 13, 2018
Grant date	Nov 13, 2018

Abstract

Systems and methods for performing traffic engineering in a communications network using a plurality of network slices are disclosed. The network slices are configured to manage a service including transmission of data along one or more flows along nodes of the communications network using a portion of physical link resources of the communications network. The method includes allocating the portion of physical link resources of the communications network associated with a first network slice of the plurality of network slices in accordance with instructions received from a traffic engineering entity associated with the first network slice.

First claim

We claim:

1. A method for performing traffic engineering on a communications network through a plurality of network slices, each network slice of the plurality of network slices configured to manage a service for transmitting data along one or more flows traversing nodes of the communications network using a portion of physical link resources, the method comprising, a resource allocation module:
receiving instructions for each of the plurality of network slices from each of the plurality of network slices or from a software defined topology module, wherein the instructions are selected from the list consisting of: point of presence information, forwarding graph information, network topology information, and network slice flow information;
determining, in accordance with the instructions received, the portion of physical link resources of the communications network required by a first network slice to manage the service associated with the first network slice;
allocating the portion of physical link resources of the communications network to the first network slice; and
communicating said allocation to a first traffic engineering entity separate from the resource allocation module, wherein traffic engineering for the first network slice is performed by the first traffic engineering entity.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein determining and allocating the portion of physical link resources is performed further according to a flow based resource assignment algorithm, or a group flow based resource assignment algorithm.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein determining and allocating the portion of physical link resources according to the flow based resource assignment algorithm comprises:
determining the one or more flows of the service managed by the first network slice from the instructions;
performing the flow based resource assignment algorithm to determine physical link resource requirements for each of the one or more flows; and
allocating the portion of physical link resources associated with the first network slice according to the determined physical link resource requirements for each of the one or more flows.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein determining and allocating the portion of physical link resources according to the group flow based resource assignment algorithm comprises:
determining the one or more flows of the service managed by the first network slice from the instructions;
determining groups of flow segments from the one or more flows;
performing the group flow based resource assignment algorithm according to the determined groups of flow segments; and
allocating the portion of physical link resources associated with the first network slice according to the results of the group flow based resource assignment algorithm.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein when the service comprises a service function chain, determining and allocating the portion of physical link resources further comprises determining flow segments according to the service function chain.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein each group of flow segments comprises one or more flow segments having a common starting node, a common ending node, or common starting and ending nodes.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein the groups of flow segments are determined for each network slice of the plurality of network slices.

8. The method of claim 4 wherein the group flow based resource assignment algorithm comprises a set of flow group conservation constraints.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the set of flow group conservation constraints comprises:

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Assignees

• Farmanbar Hamidreza
• Vrzic Sophie
• Zhang Hang
• Huawei Tech Co Ltd

Inventors

• Farmanbar Hamidreza
• Vrzic Sophie
• Zhang Hang

Classifications

• H04W72/52 Primary

  based on load · CPC title

• H04W72/0486 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04W28/10

  Flow control {between communication endpoints} · CPC title

• H04W24/08

  Testing, {supervising or monitoring} using real traffic · CPC title

• H04W40/04

  based on wireless node resources · CPC title