Virtual distributed bridging

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9768980-B2
Application number	US-201414503164-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 30, 2014
Priority date	Sep 30, 2014
Publication date	Sep 19, 2017
Grant date	Sep 19, 2017

Abstract

Virtualization software that includes a VDRB (virtual distributed router/bridge) module for performing L3 routing and/or bridging operations is provided. At least some of the VDRBs are configured as VDBs (virtual distributed bridge) for performing bridging operations between different network segments in a distributed manner. The bridging tasks of a network are partitioned among several VDBs of the network based on MAC addresses. MAC addresses of VMs or other types of network nodes belonging to an overlay logical network are partitioned into several shards, each shard of MAC addresses assigned to a VDB in the network. Each VDB assigned a shard of MAC addresses performs bridging when it receives a packet bearing a MAC address belonging to its assigned shard. A VDB does not perform bridging on packets that do not have MAC address that falls within the VDB's shard of MAC addresses.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for sending packets in a network, the method comprising:
receiving, at a computing device, a set of addresses in a first segment of the network, wherein the set of addresses is a subset of all addresses in the first segment of the network;
receiving, at a computing device, a packet from the network, the packet having a source address in the first segment of the network and a destination address in a second segment of the network;
determining whether the source address of the packet is one of the addresses included in the received set of addresses; and
based on a determination that the source address is one of the addresses included in the received set of addresses, bridging the packet from the first segment to the second segment.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first and second segments of the network include an overlay logical network and an L2 network.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the overlay logical network is a VXLAN.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein each address in the received set of addresses corresponds to a node in the overlay logical network.

5. The method of claim 2 , wherein each address in the received set of addresses is an address for a virtual machine (VM) operating in the overlay logical network.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the received packet is a first packet, and the method further comprises:
receiving a second packet from the network, the second packet having a source address in the first segment of the network and a destination address in the second segment of the network;
determining whether the source address of the second packet is one of the addresses included in the received set of addresses; and
based on a determination that the source address of the second packet is not one of the addresses included in the received set of addresses, not bridging the packet from the first segment to the second segment.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein each address in the set of addresses is a link layer MAC (media access control) address.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein bridging the packet comprises using a MAC (media access control) address lookup instead of a layer 3 (L3) address lookup.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the set of addresses is a first subset of addresses in the first segment of the network, wherein a second subset of addresses in the first segment of the network is received by another computing device for bridging packets between the first segment and the second segment only when the source address or the destination address of the packet is one of the addresses included in the second subset of addresses.

10. A method for controlling a network, the method comprising:
dividing a set of all addresses corresponding to nodes in a first segment of a network among a plurality of different sets of addresses, wherein each set of addresses in the plurality of sets of addresses is assigned to a particular distributed bridge in a plurality of distributed bridges;
configuring a first distributed bridge in the plurality of distributed bridges (i) to bridge a first packet between a first segment of the network and a second segment of the network, based on a determination that the first packet has a source address or a destination address belonging to a first set of addresses assigned to the first bridge, and (ii) to not bridge a second packet, based on a determination that the second packet has neither a source address nor a destination address that belongs to the first set of addresses; and
configuring a second distributed bridge in the plurality of distributed bridges (i) to bridge a third packet between the first segment of the network and the second segment of the network, based on a determination that the third packet has a source address or a destination address belonging to a second set of addresses assigned to the second bridge, and (ii) to not bridge a fourth packet, based on a determination that the fourth packet has neither a source address nor a destination address that belongs to the second set of addresses.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the first and second segments of the network include an overlay logical network and an L2 network.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein bridging the packet comprises using a layer 2 (L2) address lookup instead of a layer 3 (L3) address lookup.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein each address in the first and second sets of addresses is an address for a virtual machine (VM) operating in the overlay logical network.

14. The method of claim 10 , wherein the first and second segments of the network coexist in an L2 physical segment of the network.

15. The method of claim 10 , wherein bridging a packet comprises identifying the second segment of the network based on the destination address.

16. The method of claim 10 , wherein each address in the first and second sets of addresses is a link layer MAC (media access control) address.

17. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program, which when executed by a set of processing units of a computing device, sends packets in a network, the program comprising sets of instructions for:
receiving a set of addresses in a first segment of the network, wherein the set of addresses is a subset of all addresses in the first segment of the network;
receiving a packet from the network, the packet having a source address in the first segment of the network and a destination address in a second segment of the network;
determining whether the source address of the packet is one of the addresses included in the received set of addresses;
based on a determination that the source address of the packet is one of the addresses included in the received set of addresses, bridging the packet from the first segment to the second segment; and
based on a determination that the source address of the packet is not one of the addresses included in the received set of addresses, not bridging the packet from the first segment to the second segment.

18. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , wherein the first and second segments of the network includes an overlay logical network and an L2 network.

19. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , wherein bridging the packet comprises using a layer 2 (L2) address lookup instead of a layer 3 (L3) address lookup.

20. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , wherein each address in the sets of addresses is a link layer MAC (media access control) address.

Assignees

• Nicira Inc

Inventors

• Subramaniyam Rahul Korivi
• Wang Howard
• Chandrashekhar Ganesan
• Agarwal Vivek
• Singh Ram Dular

Classifications

• H04L12/4625 Primary

  Single bridge functionality, e.g. connection of two networks over a single bridge · CPC title

• H04L12/462

  LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone · 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