NETWORK CONTROL SOFTWARE NOTIFICATION WITH ADVANCE LEARNING

摘要

Techniques are disclosed for notifying network control software of new and moved source MAC addresses. In one embodiment, a switch detects packets sent by a new or migrated virtual machine, and sends a copy of a detected packet to the network control software as a notification. The switch further learns the source MAC address, thereby permitting the entry to be used for normal forwarding prior to validation of the entry and the VM associated therewith by the network control software. Until the network control software has validated the VM, the switch may periodically retry the notification to the network control software. “No_Redirect” and “Not_Validated” flags may be used to indicate whether a notification has already been attempted and thus no retry is necessary, and that the VM associated with the VM has not yet been validated, respectively.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for notifying network control software of new and moved source media access control (MAC) addresses, comprising:
determining that a received first packet includes either a new or moved source MAC address; inserting or updating an entry in a forwarding database, wherein the inserted or updated entry includes the source MAC address extracted from the first packet; transmitting a copy of the first packet as a notification to the network control software; and setting a first flag and a second flag of the forwarding database entry, wherein the set first flag indicates that the network control software has been notified, and wherein the set second flag indicates that the network control software has not yet validated the source MAC address of the forwarding database entry.