Diagnosing connectivity in a network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9467330-B2
Application number	US-201314053241-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 14, 2013
Priority date	Oct 14, 2013
Publication date	Oct 11, 2016
Grant date	Oct 11, 2016

Abstract

Diagnosing connectivity in a network includes obtaining information from a network wherein the network is a hybrid network including software-defined networking (SDN) network components and other network components, querying a SDN controller for network metrics of the network, and diagnosing a connectivity issue in the network based on the information from the network and the network metrics.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for diagnosing connectivity in a network, said method comprising:
obtaining information from a network wherein said network is a hybrid network comprising software-defined networking (SDN) network components and other network components;
querying a SDN controller for network metrics of said network; and
diagnosing a connectivity issue in said network based on said information from said network and said network metrics.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein obtaining said information from said network includes using said SDN controller to create a SDN topology of said SDN network components.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein obtaining said information from said network includes issuing a ping, a traceroute, or combinations thereof to create a component topology of said other network components.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising creating a fault report based on said information from said network and said network metrics.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein said fault report includes a path analysis, a node analysis, a match field analysis, a port status analysis, an input and output parameter analysis, an action and group analysis, or combinations thereof of said network.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein said fault report indicates said connectivity issue in said network.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein said connectivity issue involves link jitter, packet loss, delay time, device reachable, memory availability, central processing unit (CPU) availability, or combinations thereof.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
combining information from said SDN controller with information from said other network components that are outside a domain of the SDN controller to produce a fault topology for the network based on both an SDN topology of SDN network components and a component topology of said other network components outside a domain of the SDN controller;
wherein said diagnosing the connectivity issue comprises using said fault topology.

9. A system for diagnosing connectivity in a network, said system comprising:
a diagnosing system;
a network interface connecting the diagnosing system to a network wherein said network is a hybrid network comprising a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controller, SDN network components and other components of the network outside a domain of the SDN controller;
the diagnosing system to:
query the SDN controller for network metrics of said network;
communicate with the other components of the network to obtain other network information;
combine the network metrics from the SDN controller with the other network information to produce combined information;
diagnose a lack of connectivity issue in said network based on said combined information; and
create a fault report based on a result of the diagnosis.

10. The system of claim 9 , the diagnosing system further to:
use data from said SDN controller to create a SDN topology of said SDN network components; and
use a ping, a traceroute, or combinations thereof to create a component topology of said other network components.

11. The system of claim 10 , further comprising a graphical user interface for displaying a network topology combining said SDN topology and said component topology, said displayed network topology illustrating a location between components of the lack of connectivity issue.

12. The system of claim 9 , wherein said fault report includes a path analysis, a node analysis, a match field analysis, a port status analysis, an input and output parameter analysis, an action and group analysis, or combinations thereof of said network.

13. The system of claim 9 , wherein said fault report indicates said connectivity issue in said network and wherein said connectivity issue involves link jitter, packet loss, delay time, device reachable, memory availability, central processing unit (CPU) availability, or combinations thereof.

14. The system of claim 9 , further comprising a graphical user interface for displaying the result of the diagnosis, the result comprising a listing of different types of connectivity issue diagnosis; a listing of an analysis made for each type of connectivity issue and a result for each analysis made.

15. The system of claim 9 , further comprising a graphical user interface for accepting user input specifying a source node and a destination node and then initiating an analysis of a path between said source and destination nodes.

16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the analysis of the path between said source and destination nodes comprises a bandwidth metric, traffic metric and time online metric.

17. A computer program product for diagnosing connectivity in a network, comprising:
a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, said computer readable storage medium comprising computer readable program code embodied therewith, said computer readable program code comprising program instructions that, when executed, causes a processor to:
obtain information from a network wherein said network is a hybrid network comprising software-defined networking (SDN) network components and other network components, said information comprising two sets of data including a first data set of network metrics obtained by querying an SDN controller in control of said SDN network components and a second set of data obtained by pinging or tracerouting the other network component which are not under control of the SDN controller; and
diagnose a lack of connectivity issue in said network based on a combination of said first and second data sets.

18. The computer program product of claim 17 , further comprising computer readable program code comprising program instructions that, when executed, cause said processor to generate a network topology using both said first and second data sets.

19. The computer program product of claim 17 , further comprising computer readable program code comprising program instructions that, when executed, cause said processor to create a fault report based on said combination of said first and second data sets.

20. The computer program product of claim 19 , wherein said fault report includes a path analysis, a node analysis, a match field analysis, a port status analysis, an input and output parameter analysis, an action and group analysis, or combinations thereof of said network.

Assignees

• Hewlett Packard Development Co Lp
• Hewlett Packard Entpr Dev Lp

Inventors

• Stuart Leslie R

Classifications

• H04L43/08

  Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters · CPC title

• H04L43/20

  the monitoring system or the monitored elements being virtualised, abstracted or software-defined entities, e.g. SDN or NFV · CPC title

• H04L41/0631 Primary

  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

• H04L41/40 Primary

  using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities · CPC title

• H04L41/065

  involving logical or physical relationship, e.g. grouping and hierarchies · CPC title