SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTINUOUS MEASUREMENT OF TRANSIT LATENCY IN INDIVIDUAL DATA SWITCHES AND MULTI-DEVICE TOPOLOGIES

摘要

A system, method, and associated apparatus for continuous measurement of transit latency in individual data switches and multi-device topologies is disclosed, which enables an accurate measure of real-word latency on production networks by applying a time stamp to production network data on ingress to a network element and determining a traversal time by capturing the time stamp on egress from the network element. In one embodiment, time stamps applied to network data are removed on egress to avoid undesirable packet growth across multiple hops of the network. Timing information on data flow through the data/forwarding plane of each network node of a production network can be gathered without the use of test harnesses, injected network data, or dedicated ports.

主权项

1. A network element comprising:
a first port to receive production network data, wherein production network data is data that is used for purposes other than testing the performance of a network; a second port to transmit the production network data; a data plane coupled to the first port and the second port, the data plane to forward the production network data to the second port, wherein the data plane couples to a timing module to generate ingress timing data for the network data received at the first port and generate egress timing data for the network data transmitted via the second port; and a control plane coupled to the data plane to receive the ingress timing data and the egress timing data from the data plane and to compute a network element latency for the production network data.