A method for determining a designated forwarder (DF) of a multicast flow, a device, and a system are disclosed. In an Ethernet virtual private network (EVPN) scenario, a customer edge (CE) device is connected to a plurality of provider edge (PE) devices in a dual-homed or multi-homed manner. A first PE device is any one of the plurality of PE devices. After determining that the CE device connected to an Ethernet link joins a multicast group of a multicast flow, the first PE device determines bandwidth occupation statuses of a plurality of Ethernet links included in an Ethernet segment (ES) to which the Ethernet link belongs, and then determines, as a DF of the multicast flow based on the multicast flow bandwidth occupation statuses of the plurality of Ethernet links, a PE device corresponding to an Ethernet link that occupies lowest multicast flow bandwidth.

A method for transmitting data packets of at least one communication service from a first network entity to at least one destination network entity includes: establishing a quick user datagram protocol internet connection tunnel between the first network entity and a second network entity; transmitting the data packets from the first network entity to the second network entity via the quick user datagram protocol internet connection tunnel, wherein the data packets are encapsulated within quick user datagram protocol internet connection packets, and wherein the quick user datagram protocol internet connection packets are transmitted from the first network entity to the second network entity via multiple paths; extracting the data packets from the received quick user datagram protocol internet connection packets in the second network entity; and forwarding the extracted data packets from the second network entity to a respective destination network entity.

A network apparatus comprising a trunk end point associated with an Ethernet-tree (E-Tree) service in a network domain and configured to forward a frame that comprises a tag according to the tag in the frame, wherein the tag in the frame is a root tag that indicates a root source of the frame or a leaf tag that indicates a leaf source of the frame, and wherein the trunk end point is coupled to a second end point associated with the E-tree service outside the network domain.

A network apparatus comprising a trunk end point associated with an Ethernet-tree (E-Tree) service in a network domain and configured to forward a frame that comprises a tag according to the tag in the frame, wherein the tag in the frame is a root tag that indicates a root source of the frame or a leaf tag that indicates a leaf source of the frame, and wherein the trunk end point is coupled to a second end point associated with the E-tree service outside the network domain.

Provided are methods, apparatus, and system for policy based wide area network. A network of network appliances is configured with a policy configuration. Each network appliance is configured to validate each wide area network packet against the policy configuration. The validation can include verifying that the packets meet the SD-WAN network segment requirements and security rules including verifying that the source and destination address of the packet meet the firewall zone requirements. Each wide area network packet contains a policy header that is checked by the sending and receiving network appliance against the policy configuration.

A packet processor of a network device receives packets ingressing from a plurality of network links via a plurality of network ports of the network device. The packet processor buffers the packets in an internal packet memory in a plurality of queues, including a first queue. In response to the packet processor detecting congestion in the internal packet memory, the packet processor selectively forwards a group of multiple packets in the first queue from the internal packet memory to a first port, among one or more ports coupled to one or more external memories, to transfer the group of multiple packets to a first external memory that is coupled to the first port so that the first queue is stored across the internal packet memory and the first external packet memory.

A packet processor of a network device receives packets ingressing from a plurality of network links via a plurality of network ports of the network device. The packet processor buffers the packets in an internal packet memory in a plurality of queues, including a first queue. In response to the packet processor detecting congestion in the internal packet memory, the packet processor selectively forwards a group of multiple packets in the first queue from the internal packet memory to a first port, among one or more ports coupled to one or more external memories, to transfer the group of multiple packets to a first external memory that is coupled to the first port so that the first queue is stored across the internal packet memory and the first external packet memory.

Disclosed herein are system, method, and computer program product embodiments for providing an API description of an external network service and using the API to integrate the external service into a network. An embodiment operates by receiving, from a service provider, a description of an application programming interface (API), transmitting a call to the service provider using the API for creating a new instance of a service and transmitting to the service provider a traffic flow upon which the service will be applied.

Disclosed herein are system, method, and computer program product embodiments for providing an API description of an external network service and using the API to integrate the external service into a network. An embodiment operates by receiving, from a service provider, a description of an application programming interface (API), transmitting a call to the service provider using the API for creating a new instance of a service and transmitting to the service provider a traffic flow upon which the service will be applied.

A method for controlling network congestion, including overlaying an overlay network packet header on an encapsulation outer layer of a transmit packet, where the overlay network packet header includes an outer Internet Protocol (IP) header, and an explicit congestion notification (ECN) identifier of an ECN is set in the outer IP header, decapsulating the overlay network packet header for an encapsulated reply packet, where an inner congestion identifier that is based on the ECN identifier is obtained from an IP header of the decapsulated reply packet through matching, and if the decapsulated reply packet is a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packet, forwarding the UDP packet to a preset slow channel.