Internal packet steering within a wireless access gateway

摘要

In general, techniques are described for steering data traffic for a subscriber session from a network interface of a wireless access gateway to an anchoring one of a plurality of forwarding units of the wireless access gateway using a layer 2 (L2) address of the data traffic. For example, a wireless access gateway for a wireless local area network (WLAN) access network is described as having a decentralized data plane that includes multiple forwarding units for implementing subscriber sessions. Each forwarding unit may present a network interface for sending and receiving network packets and includes packet processing capabilities to enable subscriber data packet processing to perform the functionality of the wireless access gateway. The techniques enable steering data traffic for a given subscriber session to a particular one of the forwarding units of the wireless access gateway using an L2 address of the data traffic.

主权项

1. A method performed by a wireless access gateway of a wireless local area network (WLAN) access network, the method comprising:
assigning each forwarding unit of a plurality of forwarding units a different gateway layer 2 (L2) address from a plurality of gateway L2 addresses that each identifies the wireless access gateway as a gateway device that terminates the WLAN access network at layer 2 and provides access to a layer 3 (L3) network for packets destined to any of the gateway L2 addresses, wherein the plurality of forwarding units are internal to the wireless access gateway, and wherein the wireless access gateway includes an upstream interface for a mobility tunneling protocol operating over the L3 network, wherein the upstream interface is to a mobile gateway of a mobile service provider network; selecting, by the wireless access gateway, an anchor forwarding unit of the plurality of forwarding units to anchor a subscriber session for a wireless endpoint device; sending, by the wireless access gateway to the wireless endpoint device, the gateway L2 address assigned to the anchoring forwarding unit to be used by the wireless endpoint device as a gateway L2 address for the wireless access gateway; receiving, by an ingress forwarding unit of the plurality of forwarding units and from the wireless endpoint device, a packet comprising a destination L2 address; in response to determining, by the ingress forwarding unit, the destination L2 address of the packet matches the gateway L2 address assigned to the anchor forwarding unit: forwarding, by the ingress forwarding unit, the packet to the anchor forwarding unit; and processing, by the anchor forwarding unit using a subscriber session context for the subscriber session for the wireless endpoint device, the packet to remove the L2 destination address and generate an encapsulated packet having a mobility tunneling protocol header for output via the upstream interface.