TUNNELING LOOP DETECTION CONTROL APPARATUS

摘要

Disclosed is a technique whereby a tunnel entry point, which encapsulates a packet (generates a tunnel packet), can detect the presence of a tunneling loop causing a packet to loop the same path while encapsulated. According to this technique, upon receipt of a packet from a source node (source) 1100, TEP (tunnel entry point) 1120 inserts it into a tunnel packet header for encapsulation. Upon receipt of tunnel packets from TEP 1120 and TEP 1140, each of TEP 1140 and TEP 1160 copies the identifier of the original tunnel packet header to a new tunnel packet header for encapsulation. When this tunnel packet returns to TEP 1120 due to a tunneling loop, the tunneling loop is detected by referring to the identifier in the received tunnel packet.