Various example embodiments for supporting stateful explicit paths are presented herein. Various example embodiments for supporting stateful explicit paths may be configured to support communication of a packet along a path in an Internet Protocol (IP) network from a first node to a second node, wherein the path includes a set of hops, wherein the packet includes a tuple configured to identify the path, wherein the tuple includes a first IP address of the first node, a second IP address of the second node, and a path identifier of the path, wherein the path identifier of the path is a unique identifier assigned to the path, wherein the communication of the packet along the path from the first node to the second node is supported based on state information configured to map the tuple to a next hop in the set of hops of the path.

The present disclosure relates to the field of transport networks, packet-based network systems, and load balancing in such network systems. More specifically, the load balancing is performed on a network cycle level. The present disclosure provides a network device for cycle-based load balancing, configured to obtain a load balancing policy comprising an input cycle identifier and an associated output identifier. The network device is further configured to obtain a network packet in an input cycle of the network device, determine an output of the network device based on the input cycle, the input cycle identifier, and the associated output identifier, and provide the network packet to the output of the network device.

The present disclosure is directed to BIER forwarding over varying BSL domains, the methods including the steps of receiving, at a border node, a packet comprising a BIER header having a BIER bit string with a first bit string length; reading an incoming label of the packet comprising instructions to split the BIER header into a plurality of smaller headers associated with a plurality of smaller bit strings; generating a set of split bit masks; performing a separate bitwise AND operation on each split bit mask and the BIER bit string to generate the plurality of smaller bit strings, each copied to a corresponding smaller header of the plurality of smaller headers; and performing a lookup for each of the plurality of smaller headers on a respective forwarding table to determine one or more egress routers to which to transmit the packet.

A method and an apparatus for establishing a forwarding path, the method including obtaining, by a first network node, path information of a to-be-established forwarding path, where the path information comprises an identifier of a network node on the forwarding path and a transmission resource requirement that needs to be allocated by the network node to the forwarding path, and sending a path establishment request packet based on the path information, where a packet header of the path establishment request packet comprises the path information, and where the path establishment request packet triggers the network node to allocate a transmission resource to the forwarding path based on the transmission resource requirement.

Various embodiments providing for an indicator (termed the “Traffic Category Indicator,” TCI) to be encoded into packets, different values of which can be used, e.g., to distinguish Traffic Engineered (TE) packets and non-TE packets. In an example embodiment, the TCI can be used, e.g., to configure a network node to implement different packet queues, on each link, for TE packets and non-TE packets. In embodiments corresponding to the DiffServ TE paradigm, a node can be configured to implement different queues within each Forwarding Class for each link, said different queues distinguished by different respective TCI values. Example benefits of TCI include, but are not limited to fate separation of TE and non-TE packets in a node. The TCI concept can beneficially be applied to different packet-switching technologies supporting Source Routing, such as the IP, MPLS, Ethernet, etc.

An ingress network device may receive a core domain network segment identifier associated with a core domain network of the multi-domain network. The ingress network device may receive location data of an egress network device associated with a second leaf domain network of the multi-domain network, wherein the location data may include data identifying the core domain network segment identifier, a second leaf domain network segment identifier associated with the second leaf domain network, and an egress network device segment identifier associated with the egress network device. The ingress network device may store the core domain network segment identifier and the location data, and may utilize the core domain segment identifier and the location data to route traffic to the egress network device.

A counter router (20) assigns predetermined information specifying a terminal (40) and a sequence number according to the predetermined information to a packet which is received and destined for the terminal (40). Further, the counter router (20) transfers the packet to which the predetermined information and the sequence number are assigned, to a subscriber accommodation router (10) via a relay device. Further, the subscriber accommodation router (10) stores, in an aggregation server (30), the predetermined information and the sequence number which are assigned to the packet transferred from the counter router (20).

A system comprises an edge services controller configured to: compute, based on a physical topology of physical links that connect a plurality of network interface cards (NICs) that comprise embedded switches and processing units coupled to the embedded switches, a virtual topology comprising a strict subset of the physical links; and program the virtual topology into the respective processing units of the NICs to cause the processing units of the NICs to send data packets via physical links in the strict subset of the physical links.

A method performed by a network controller for a mobile transport network. The method includes: obtaining traffic information for a plurality of demands for connectivity from client nodes through the mobile transport network, the traffic information for each demand identifying a client node for the demand, an egress node for the demand and an amount of traffic for the demand; calculating, for each demand, one or more paths from the client node, via an ingress node, to the egress node through the mobile transport network; mapping each path for a demand to a source port in the ingress node for the demand; providing the mapping to the ingress nodes to enable routing of traffic pertaining to the demands via the paths, based on the source port; and providing the source ports to the client nodes for inclusion in traffic pertaining to the demands.

The present disclosure provides a method and apparatus for failure detection and a PE device, and in particular, relates to the field of communication technology. The present disclosure is applied to the first PE device in EVPN. The first PE device is connected to the second PE device through the SRv6 PW tunnel. The method includes: generating an SRv6 packet, wherein a first indicator included in the SRv6 packets indicates that an inner packet of the SRv6 packet is a BFD packet; sending the SRv6 packet to the second PE device, so that when the second PE device is a tail node, the second PE device establishes a BFD session with a head node based on the BFD packet, and when the head node detects that the PW tunnel between the head node and the tail node fails through the BFD session, the head node switches a service flow to a backup tunnel; or, when the second PE device is a splice device, the second PE device transparently transmits the BFD packet to the tail node, so that the BFD session is established between the head node and the tail node, and when the head node detects that the PW tunnel between the head node and the tail node fails through the BFD session, the head node switches the service flow to the backup tunnel. This may reduce the transmission delay of the service flow.