USER TRAFFIC ACCOUNTABILITY UNDER CONGESTION IN FLOW-BASED MULTI-LAYER SWITCHES

摘要

A method of policing network traffic based on congestion on a flow-based programmable switch, such as an OpenFlow switch is provided. The method polices congestion - causing flows in a network by detecting congestion (330) at a flow-based programmable switch (300) on the network. Once congestion has been detected, the method identifies one or more flows that are causing the congestion at the flow-based programmable switch (300), and penalizes the flows that were identified as causing congestion. A flow-based programmable switch (300) including a data plane (302) having input ports (304), output ports, and forwarding rules (308) that map packets received on an input port (304) to an output port based on a packet matching a rule in the forwarding rules (308) is also described. The flow-based programmable switch (300) includes a congestion detection module (330) that receives statistics from the data plane (302) and is configured to detect congestion at the flow-based programmable switch (300), a traffic/flow extractor module (340) that receives statistics and/or packets from the data plane (302) and is configured to identify a flow that is causing congestion at the flow-based programmable switch (300) when congestion has been detected, and a policing module (350) that receives information on the flow that is causing congestion from the traffic/flow extractor module (340) and is configured to penalize the flow that has been identified as causing congestion at the flow-based programmable switch (300).