Mechanisms are provided for performing traffic load balancing on ingress traffic directed to a Link Aggregation Group (LAG). The mechanisms monitor a ingress traffic load across a plurality of links of the Link Aggregation Group (LAG). The mechanisms determine if the ingress traffic load across the plurality of links is unbalanced. Moreover, the mechanisms, in response to determining that the ingress traffic load across the plurality of links is unbalanced, send a message to a switch associated with the LAG requesting the switch to modify routing of ingress traffic to the LAG to perform ingress traffic load balancing.

The techniques described herein enable the establishment of two simultaneous virtual private network (VPN) connections between a VPN gateway and a VPN client. The system is configured to update a routing table advertised to network resources when a VPN server instance fails and/or is taken offline. When a first VPN server instance fails and/or is taken offline, the first VPN server instance releases a claim of ownership on its range of IP addresses. After this release occurs, the second VPN server instance is configured to claim ownership of the range of IP addresses that used to be owned by the first VPN server instance. This updated claim of ownership is captured in an updated routing table that can then be advertised to the network resources. Consequently, the network resources use this updated routing table to correctly determine which VPN server instance to send data intended for the VPN client.

Techniques are described for avoiding traffic black-holing in a multi-homed Ethernet virtual private networks (EVPNs) in which a customer device (CE) is multi-homed to a plurality of multi-homing provider edge devices (PEs) via respective links of an Ethernet segment. An overlay network is created over the Ethernet segment, and the multi-homing PEs of the EVPN are configured with a common anycast IP address for respective virtual network interfaces. Upon election as active designated forwarder (DF) for the EVPN, the DF PE of the multi-homing PEs advertises toward the customer network an IGP metric for the anycast IP address that is lower than the IGP metric(s) advertised by any of the non-DF standby PE routers segment to direct the CE to forward network packets from the customer network to the DF PE over the respective link of the Ethernet segment.

A method involves setting a link aggregation control protocol (LACP) link state for all links in a first service node to STANDBY to put at least one multiplexer in the first service node in a WAITING state to disable frame collection at the redundant service node and setting the LACP link state for all links in a second service node to SELECTED to put at least one multiplexer in the second service node in a COLLECTING/DISTRIBUTING state to enable frame collection at the primary service node.

Due to interference that typically occurs in the ISM band, it may be necessary for one or more network devices to switch to an alternative channel. A list of one or more alternate network channels may be generated by a coordinating/gateway device based on the energy level and a distance from a primary network channel. The alternate network channel list may be distributed to neighbor devices and, in the event of interference, link loss, and/or a channel switch notification, the neighbor devices may automatically switch to the first alternate network channel in the list.

Techniques are described for providing fast re-route (FRR) node and/or link protection along a primary label switched path (LSP) using generic routing encapsulation (GRE) over multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). An ingress edge router of a primary LSP is configured to encapsulate incoming packets into GRE with a destination address of an egress edge router of the primary LSP, and push a primary label onto the encapsulated packet for forwarding along the primary LSP. Upon a failover to a bypass LSP, a point of local repair (PLR) router swaps the primary label on the encapsulated packet with a bypass label. A merge point (MP) router then receives the encapsulated packet via the bypass LSP, and performs a lookup using the destination address of the egress edge router included on the encapsulated packet in order to determine a primary label for forwarding the encapsulated packet along the primary LSP.

A data center failure management system and method in a Software Defined Networking (SDN) deployment. In one embodiment, an SDN controller associated with the data center is configured to learn new flows entering the data center and determine which flows require flow stickiness. Responsive to the determination, the SDN controller generates commands to one or more switching nodes and/or one or more border gateway nodes to redirect the sticky flows arriving at the switching nodes via ECMP routes from the gateway nodes or avoid the ECMP routes by the gateway nodes in order to overcome certain failure conditions encountered in the data center, an external network, or both.

The embodiments disclosed herein provide fast recovery of a network signal path by, in the event of a failure or unacceptable degradation in a signal in the original network path, diverting the optical signal passing through the network to a preselected bypass optical path which is maintained in a warm or operational state. The optical elements on the bypass optical path are available network resources which may, during part or all of the time the bypass path is designated for a node in the primary optical path, be in use to transmit other optical signals in the network. By maintaining the resources in the designated bypass path in a warm or operating state, fast rerouting and recovery of an interrupted signal is possible.

Methods and systems for resilient network communication are provided. In one aspect, a network includes multiple edge network elements, core network elements, and off-network network elements. Each network element has multiple ports. Communication paths exist between edge network elements, traversing core network elements. A maintenance domain maintains communication resiliency in the network through maintenance domain entities that detect network communication faults. Maintenance domain entities are associated with ports of edge network elements. VLAN service provision to subscribers occurs over the network by mapping services to VLAN tags such that the service VLAN includes information about the resilient network. VLAN service assignment to maintenance domains is balanced.

Cross-layer information associated with a software defined networking-based (SDN-based) communication network is collected. One or more updates are sent to one or more network elements in the SDN-based communication network to control one or more local decisions made at the one or more network elements. The one or more updates are based on at least a portion of the collected cross-layer information. Preferably, the collecting and sending steps are performed by a controller implementing an SDN management plane associated with the SDN-based communication network.