Network fabric overlay

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9876715-B2
Application number	US-201414530550-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 31, 2014
Priority date	Nov 5, 2013
Publication date	Jan 23, 2018
Grant date	Jan 23, 2018

Abstract

Disclosed herein are methods of forwarding packets on a network, such as a leaf-spine network having leaf devices and spine devices. The methods may include receiving a packet at an ingress leaf device, and determining based, at least in part, on a header of the packet whether the packet is to be transmitted to a spine device. The methods may further include ascertaining based, at least in part, on a header of the packet whether to perform encapsulation on the packet, encapsulating the packet according to a result of the ascertaining, and then transmitting the packet to a spine device according to a result of the determining. Also disclosed herein are network apparatuses which include a processor and a memory, at least one of the processor or the memory being configured to perform some or all of the foregoing described methods.

First claim

We claim:

1. A method, comprising:
receiving a packet at an ingress leaf device of a leaf-spine network;
determining by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network based, at least in part, on a header of the packet whether the packet is to be transmitted to a spine device of the leaf-spine network;
obtaining, by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network, an identifier of a destination device to which the packet is addressed from a header of the packet;
determining by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network that it does not have a location of the destination device;
encapsulating by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network the packet such that an encapsulated packet is generated, a header of the encapsulated packet including a proxy address of a proxy in a spine tier of the leaf-spine network; and
after encapsulating the packet, transmitting the encapsulated packet by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network to a particular device of the leaf-spine network according to a result of the determining, the particular device being a proxy device associated with the proxy address or a spine device associated with the proxy address.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the packet is received from a device, the method further comprising:
determining whether the device is a trusted device;
wherein ascertaining is based, at least in part, upon whether the device is a trusted device.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining that the packet has previously been encapsulated; and
determining a type of encapsulation of the packet;
ascertaining whether to perform encapsulation on the packet based, at least in part, upon the type of encapsulation of the packet;
wherein encapsulating the packet is performed according to a result of the ascertaining.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
ascertaining whether to perform encapsulation on the packet;
wherein ascertaining is performed based, at least in part, upon whether the packet is to be transmitted to a spine device.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
selecting one of two or more spine devices;
wherein transmitting comprises sending the packet to the selected spine device.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein selecting one of the two or more spine devices is performed based, at least in part, upon an identifier of the end device in a header of the packet.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein selecting one of the two or more spine devices is further performed based, at least in part, upon a flow associated with the packet.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
selecting one of two or more proxies;
wherein transmitting comprises sending the packet to the selected proxy.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein selecting one of the two or more proxies is performed based, at least in part, upon an identifier of the end device in a header of the packet.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein selecting one of the two or more proxies is further performed based, at least in part, upon a flow associated with the packet.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the proxy is implemented in one or more servers.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the proxy is implemented in one or more spine devices.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the proxy is a layer 2 proxy.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the proxy is a layer 3 proxy.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining is performed using an adjacency table maintained by the ingress leaf device.

16. A method, comprising:
receiving a packet at an ingress leaf device of a leaf-spine network;
determining by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network based, at least in part, on a header of the packet that the packet is to be transmitted to a spine device of the leaf-spine network;
obtaining, by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network, an identifier of a destination device to which the packet is addressed from a header of the packet;
determining by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network that it does not have a location of the destination device;
encapsulating by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network the packet such that an encapsulated packet is generated, a header of the encapsulated packet including a proxy address of a proxy in a spine tier of the leaf-spine network; and
after encapsulating the packet, transmitting the encapsulated packet by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network to a particular device of the leaf-spine network, the particular device being a proxy device associated with the proxy address or a spine device associated with the proxy address.

17. An apparatus, comprising:
a processor; and
a memory, at least one of the processor or the memory being configured to:
receive a packet at a leaf device of a leaf-spine network;
determine by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network based, at least in part, on a header of the packet whether the packet is to be transmitted to a spine device of the leaf-spine network;
obtain, by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network, an identifier of a destination device to which the packet is addressed from a header of the packet;
determine by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network that it does not have a location of the destination device;
encapsulate by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network the packet such that an encapsulated packet is generated, a header of the encapsulated packet including a proxy address of a proxy in a spine tier of the leaf-spine network; and
after encapsulating the packet, transmit the encapsulated packet by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network to a particular device of the leaf-spine network according to a result of the determining, the particular device being a proxy device associated with the proxy address or a spine device associated with the proxy address.

18. The apparatus of claim 17 , wherein the memory and/or processor are further configured to ascertain by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network based, at least in part, on a header of the packet whether to perform encapsulation on the packet.

19. An apparatus, comprising:
means for receiving a packet at a leaf device of a leaf-spine network;
means for determining by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network based, at least in part, on a header of the packet whether the packet is to be transmitted to a spine device of the leaf-spine network;
means for obtaining, by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network, an identifier of a destination device to which the packet is addressed from a header of the packet;
means for determining by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network that it does not have a location of the destination device;
means for encapsulating by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network the packet such that an encapsulated packet is generated, a header of the encapsulated packet including a proxy address of a proxy in a spine tier of the leaf-spine network; and
means for transmitting the encapsulated packet by the ingress leaf device of the leaf-spine network to a particular device of the leaf-spine network, after encapsulating the packet, according to a result of the determining, the particular device being a proxy device associated with the proxy address or a spine device associated with the proxy address.

Assignees

• Cisco Tech Inc

Inventors

• Edsall Thomas James
• Yadav Navindra
• Matus Francisco M
• Chu Kit Chiu
• Smith Michael R
• Merchant Sameer
• Doddapaneni Krishna
• Sinha Satyam

Classifications

• H04L49/10

  characterised by the switching fabric construction · CPC title

• H04L45/66

  Layer 2 routing, e.g. in Ethernet based MAN's · CPC title

• G06F2009/45595

  Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances · CPC title

• G06F9/45558

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• H04L45/74 Primary

  Address processing for routing · CPC title