Mesh network of simple nodes with centralized control

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9634928-B2
Application number	US-201414500793-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 29, 2014
Priority date	Sep 29, 2014
Publication date	Apr 25, 2017
Grant date	Apr 25, 2017

Abstract

A mesh network of wired and/or wireless nodes is described in which a centralized controller provides seamless end-to-end service from the edge of the mesh network to mesh nodes located proximate to subscriber devices. The controller operates to provide a central configuration point for configuring forwarding planes of the mesh nodes of the mesh network, so as to set up transport data channels to transport traffic from the edge nodes via the mesh nodes to the subscriber devices.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
a mesh network comprising a plurality of mesh nodes, wherein each of the plurality of mesh nodes is configured to communicate with one or more subscriber devices;
one or more edge nodes to couple the mesh network to a core network; and
a centralized controller in communication with the plurality of mesh nodes and edge nodes, wherein the centralized controller comprises:
a topology module that executes a control protocol to receive topology information for the mesh network from the plurality of mesh nodes; and
a path computation module (PCM) that computes forwarding information for

one or more data channels based at least in part on the topology information, wherein the data channels are for transporting network packets to and from the subscriber devices via the mesh nodes,
wherein each of the mesh nodes operates a reduced control plane without execution of a layer three (L3) routing protocol that maintains routing information for the mesh network and generates forwarding information for the respective mesh node,
wherein the topology module receives a set of messages sent by the mesh nodes, wherein each of the set of messages specifies a list of interfaces traversed by the respective message, wherein the centralized controller establishes a control channel with each of the mesh nodes based on the list of interfaces specified by the messages, and
wherein the centralized controller outputs one or more messages to the mesh nodes via the respective control channels to communicate and install within each of the mesh nodes the forwarding information for the one or more data channels.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein each of the plurality of mesh nodes includes a data plane to perform one or more forwarding operations on the network packets to forward the network packets on the data channels.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more edge nodes comprise a plurality of edge nodes that provide multiple exit points from the mesh network.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of mesh nodes comprises a plurality of wireless devices and one or more wireless access points.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of mesh nodes comprises one or more of wired mesh nodes that communicate via a wired connection, wireless mesh nodes that communicate via wireless communications, and mesh nodes that communicate via both wired and wireless connections.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the one or more edge nodes and controller are on the same device.

7. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:
an aggregation network comprising one or more aggregation nodes, wherein the central controller is in communication with the aggregation nodes, and wherein the centralized controller outputs one or more messages to the aggregation nodes to communicate and install within each of the aggregation nodes forwarding information for the one or more data channels.

8. The system of claim 1 ,
wherein the PCM computes the topology information for the network based on the list of interfaces specified by the messages.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the set of messages comprises a set of Discover messages, wherein the set of Discover messages specifies capacity of one or more links associated with the interfaces, wherein the path computation module generates the forwarding information for the data channels based at least in part on the topology information and one or more of the capacity of the links associated with the interfaces and path requests for the data channels.

10. The system of claim 9 ,
wherein the plurality of mesh nodes comprises one or more of wired mesh nodes that communicate via a wired connection, wireless mesh nodes that communicate via wireless communications, and mesh nodes that communicate via both wired and wireless connections, and
wherein the one or more links comprise one or more wireless links.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the path computation module generates scheduling information for scheduling wireless network traffic on the wireless links associated with the interfaces of the wireless mesh nodes.

12. The system of claim 1 , wherein the topology module receives a plurality of messages sent by the wireless mesh nodes, wherein each of the plurality of messages specifies a current error rate of one or more wireless links associated with the interfaces, and wherein the centralized controller processes the topology information for the network and computes paths for the data channels in real-time based on the current error rates for the wireless links.

13. The system of claim 1 ,
wherein the plurality of mesh nodes comprises one or more of wired mesh nodes that communicate via a wired connection, wireless mesh nodes that communicate via wireless communications, and mesh nodes that communicate via both wired and wireless connections, and
wherein the topology module receives a plurality of messages sent by the mesh nodes, wherein each of the plurality of messages specifies load conditions of the network packets at the mesh nodes, and wherein the centralized controller processes the topology information for the network, computes link scheduling information in real-time based on the load conditions for the wireless links, and sends the link scheduling information to the mesh nodes for installation at the mesh nodes.

14. The system of claim 1 , wherein the topology module executes an interior routing protocol to receive at least some of the topology information from the edge nodes.

15. The system of claim 1 , wherein the topology module receives at least some of the topology information from a centralized topology database.

16. The system of claim 1 , wherein the topology module receives a plurality of messages sent by the mesh nodes, wherein each of the plurality of messages specifies load conditions of the network packets at the mesh nodes, and wherein the centralized controller processes the topology information for the network and computes paths for the data channels in real-time based on the load conditions for the links.

17. The system of claim 16 ,
wherein the plurality of mesh nodes comprises one or more of wired mesh nodes that communicate via a wired connection, wireless mesh nodes that communicate via wireless communications, and mesh nodes that communicate via both wired and wireless connections, and
wherein the one or more links comprise one or more wireless links.

18. The system of claim 1 ,
wherein each of the mesh nodes executes a discovery protocol that outputs a Hello message on interfaces of the respective mesh node, wherein each of the Hello messages includes an identifier that is unique to the mesh node that sent the Hello message and the interface on which the Hello message was sent, and
wherein, in accordance with the discovery protocol, each of the mesh nodes outputs a Hello reply message on each interface on which a Hello message was received.

19. The system of claim 18 , wherein the set of messages comprises a set of Discover messages, wherein, responsive to receiving the Hello reply messages, each of the mesh nodes outputs the Discover messages, each of which specifies a neighbor node list identifying neighboring nodes and interfaces on which the mesh nodes are reachable from the outputting one of the mesh nodes.

20. The system of claim 19 , wherein each of the mesh nodes, upon receiving a Discover message and determining that the Discover message does not include a layer two address for the res

Assignees

• Juniper Networks Inc

Inventors

• Choudhury Abhijit Kumar
• Murphy James Michael
• Boddu Jayabharat
• Sindhu Pradeep

Classifications

• H04W84/18

  Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks · CPC title

• H04W40/04

  based on wireless node resources · CPC title

• H04L45/02

  Topology update or discovery · CPC title

• H04L45/42 Primary

  Centralised routing · CPC title

• H04L45/28

  using route fault recovery · CPC title