Cross-layer link failure alerts

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10498621-B2
Application number	US-201715791824-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 24, 2017
Priority date	Aug 26, 2014
Publication date	Dec 3, 2019
Grant date	Dec 3, 2019

Abstract

Described herein is a network device configured to determine and provide alerts of communication link failures across layers of a communication stack of the network device. The network device determines at a radio link layer of the communication stack that a communication link between the network device and a network has failed. The network device then alerts one or more components associated with another layer of the communication stack of the determination that the communication link has failed.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
determining, by a radio link analyzer associated with a radio link layer, a failure status indicating that a communication link between the network device and a network has failed;
analyzing by the radio link analyzer, one or more radio link layer logs to identify one or more active applications associated with an application layer of the communication stack of the communication stack;
alerting, by the radio link analyzer, the one or more active applications that the communication link has failed and of a reason for the failure of the communication link, wherein the alerting comprises providing notification of the failure of the communication link or exposing a status of the communication link and receiving polling from the one or more applications and sending instructions to the one or more applications to cause the one or more applications to take the action, the instructions associated with the failure status, wherein the one or more applications include an operating system or an application.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining and the alerting are performed independently of any link failure timers of the one or more applications.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the radio link analyzer is included in a radio chipset and the radio link layer maintains the logs.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the alerting includes alerting a transmission control protocol (TCP) layer component, analyzing a TCP layer log, and identifying the one or more applications from the TCP layer log.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more applications utilize the one or more reasons to determine whether to terminate connections, wait, or reestablish connections.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein different ones of the one or more applications take different actions depending on at least one of the one or more reasons or a time since the determining of the failure status of the communication link.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the instructions cause the one or more applications to terminate connections, wait, or reestablish connections.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining comprises detecting a loss of the communication link, waiting for a time period, and determining whether the communication link is reestablished before determining that the communication link has failed.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the alerting comprises broadcasting a notification of the failure status corresponding to the determining that the communication link has failed.

10. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having programming instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a network device, cause the network device to perform operations comprising:
determining, by a radio link analyzer associated with a radio link layer of a communication stack of the network device, a failure status indicating that a communication link between the network device and a network has failed;
analyzing, by the radio link analyzer, one or more radio link layer logs to identify one or more applications actively engaged in communication with another device, the one or more components associated with an application layer of the communication stack of the communication stack, and
alerting, by the radio link analyzer layer, one or more components of the failure status of the communication link and of a reason for the failure status of the communication link to enable the one or more components to take action based on the reason, the alerting comprises providing notification of the failure of the communication link or exposing a status of the communication link, receiving polling from the one or more components, and sending instructions to the one or more components to cause the one or more components to take the action based on the reason, the action specified by the instructions and the instructions associated with the failure status, and wherein the one or more components include an operating system or an application.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , wherein the one or more components include a connection manager.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , wherein the alerting includes alerting a transmission control protocol (TCP) layer component, analyzing a TCP layer log, identifying one or more components from the TCP layer log, and alerting the one or more applications.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , wherein alerting, by the radio link analyzer, includes alerting at least one default component.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , wherein the determining and the alerting are performed independently of any link failure timers of the one or more components.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , wherein the instructions cause the one or more components to terminate connections, wait, or reestablish connections.

16. A network device comprising:
one or more processors; and
one or more computer-readable media storing instructions executable by the one or more processors, wherein the instructions program the one or more processors to perform actions comprising:
determining, by a radio link analyzer associated with a radio link layer of a communication stack of a network device, a failure status indicating that a communication link between the network device and a network has failed;
alerting, by the radio link analyzer, one or more components associated with an application layer of the communication stack of the failure status and of a reason for the failure status of the communication link, the alerting comprises providing notification of the failure of the communication link or exposing a status of the communication link, receiving polling from the one or more components, and sending instructions to the one or more components to cause the one or more components to take an action specified by the instructions, the instructions associated with the failure status, wherein the one or more components include an operating system or an application.

17. The network device of claim 16 , wherein the determining and the alerting are performed independently of any link failure timers of the one or more components.

18. The network device of claim 16 , wherein the alerting includes alerting a transmission control protocol (TCP) layer component, analyzing a TCP layer log, and identifying the one or more applications from the TCP layer log.

19. The network device of claim 16 , wherein the determining comprises detecting a loss of the communication link, waiting for a time period, and determining whether the communication link is reestablished before determining that the communication link has failed.

20. The network device of claim 16 , wherein the instructions cause the one or more components to terminate connections, wait, or reestablish connections.

21. The network device of claim 16 , wherein the radio link analyzer is included in a radio chipset.

Assignees

• T Mobile Usa Inc

Inventors

• Hui Jie
• Jia Yunhan
• Liu Jun
• Sontineni Kranthi

Classifications

• H04L41/0631

  using root cause analysis; using analysis of correlation between notifications, alarms or events based on decision criteria, e.g. hierarchy, tree or time analysis · CPC title

• H04W24/00

  Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements · CPC title

• H04W24/04

  Arrangements for maintaining operational condition · CPC title

• H04L43/0847 Primary

  Transmission error · CPC title

• H04L43/10

  Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route · CPC title