Systems and methods for efficient network traffic forwarding

摘要

A network may include a core region having routers and peripheral regions coupled to the core regions. Switches controlled by a controller may be interposed between the routers. The controller may maintain network topology information of the network. A path computation module may identify forwarding paths between the network routers based on the network topology information and other information such as network traffic history, current network traffic conditions, future network traffic forecasts, or other desired network information. The controller may control the switches to implement the identified forwarding paths. The controller may detect network topology changes and update forwarding paths based on the detected network topology changes. The controller may determine weights of path segments of the network topology. A routing module may provide the path segment weights to the routers using a network protocol.

主权项

1. A method of operating a network having a core portion and peripheral portions, wherein the core portion of the network includes routers and switches interposed between the routers and wherein the switches are controlled by a controller, the method comprising:
with the controller, determining a forwarding path from a first router to a second router through the switches based on network traffic conditions; and with the controller, controlling the switches to implement the forwarding path from the first router to the second router by providing flow table entries to the switches via control paths coupled between the switches and the controller, wherein each of the switches has a corresponding set of forwarding rules that controls how that switch forwards network traffic, each of the forwarding rules includes source and destination address fields and an action to be performed in response to matching a network packet to the source and destination address fields, the routers have corresponding addresses, and controlling the switches to implement the forwarding path from the first router to the second router comprises:
selecting a switch included in the forwarding path;determining whether the address of the second router matches the destination address fields of the forwarding rules of the set that corresponds to the selected switch; andin response to determining that the address of the second router fails to match any of the destination address fields of the set of forwarding rules that corresponds to the selected switch, configuring the selected switch with a generic forwarding rule that matches network packets sent to the second router.