A method for publishing a publication message includes receiving, at one of a plurality of first relays, a subscription request from a first client and transmitting the subscription request from the one of the plurality of first relays to first and second central relays of a plurality of central relays. The method also includes receiving, at another of the plurality of first relays, a publication request from a second client. The publication request includes the publication message. The method further includes transmitting the publication message from the another of the plurality of first relays to all of the plurality of central relays, transmitting the publication message from at least one of the first and second central relays to the one of the plurality of first relays, and transmitting the publication message from the one of the plurality of first relays to the first client.

In an embodiment, a computer-implemented method for highly-scalable, in-network multicasting of statistics data is disclosed. In an embodiment, a method comprises: receiving, from an underlay controller, a match-and-action table that is indexed using one or more multicast (“MC”) group identifiers and includes one or more special MC headers; detecting a packet carrying statistics data; determining whether the packet includes an MC group identifier; in response to determining that the packet includes the MC group identifier: using the MC group identifier, retrieving a special MC header, of the one or more special MC headers, from the match-and-action table; generating an encapsulated packet by encapsulating the packet with the special MC header; and providing the encapsulated packet to an interface controller for transmitting the encapsulated packet to one or more physical switches.

A method is performed at a router configured to perform Bit Index Explicit Replication (BIER) for forwarding of multicast packets in a network. The method includes, upon receiving a multicast packet of a multicast flow, accessing flow mappings in which multicast flows are mapped to fixed accounting values corresponding to the multicast flows. The method further comprises generating a BIER header for the multicast packet by encoding a multi-segment entropy field of the BIER header with (i) a variable entropy value for equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) load balancing, and (ii) a fixed accounting value among the fixed accounting values that is mapped to the multicast flow in the flow mappings. The method also includes encapsulating the multicast packet with the BIER header to produce an encapsulated multicast packet, and forwarding the encapsulated multicast packet.

A narrow-band wireless data network includes a central provisioning server that is configured for providing command and control data to the network, to retain the mesh-tree structure of the network, and to manage and retain all sensor data and new connection requests. A gateway device is connected to the central provisioning server for communicating with the network through a first and a second radio receiver/transmitter that is configured to send and receive data on at least one frequency channel. Multiple device nodes that control and communicate with associated sensor devices for collecting sensor data. The device nodes interpret and execute commands transmitted from the gateway device or other device nodes on the network addressed to individual device nodes. The commands are executed with no acknowledgment.

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method for indicating a multicast forwarding entry and a device. The method includes: receiving a packet from a first node, wherein the packet comprises a multicast control message and an access loop identifier; obtaining, according to a multicast Internet Protocol (IP) address in the multicast control message, a multicast Media Access Control (MAC) address; obtaining an identifier of a first port according to the access loop identifier, wherein the first port is an egress port, on the multicast path, of the first port; sending a first forwarding entry to the first node, wherein a destination address of the first forwarding entry is the multicast MAC address and egress port information of the first forwarding entry is the identifier of the first port.

A router is configured for deployment in a first domain of a network. The router includes a processor and a transmitter. The processor is configured to access addresses of egress routers for a multicast flow that are partitioned into local addresses of egress routers in the first domain and external addresses of egress routers in a second domain of the network. The processor is also configured to prepend an explicit multicast route (EMR) to a packet in the multicast flow to form a first EMR packet. The EMR includes information representing the external addresses. The transmitter is configured to unicast the first EMR packet to an advertising border router (ABR) that conveys the multicast flow from the first domain to the second domain. In some cases, the router includes a receiver configured to receive another EMR packet from another router in another domain via a tunnel between the routers.

A path establishment method and a controller are disclosed. The method includes: when detecting a path establishment request for establishing P2MP TE, computing a P2MP TE path by using head node information and tail node information included in the path establishment request; identifying a target branch node in the P2MP TE path, and obtaining a label of the target branch node; and when a third node corresponding to the head node information and the target branch node are not a same node, sending first information to the third node, and sending second information to the target branch node, where the second information is used to instruct the target branch node to generate a multicast forwarding entry. Embodiments of this application can reduce complexity of establishing the P2MP TE path.

Some embodiments provide a method for a set of central controllers that manages forwarding elements operating in a plurality of datacenters. The method receives a configuration for a bridge between (i) a logical L2 network that spans at least two datacenters and (ii) a physical L2 network. The configuration specifies a particular one of the datacenters for implementation of the bridge. The method identifies multiple managed forwarding elements that implement the logical L2 network and are operating in the particular datacenter. The method selects one of the identified managed forwarding elements to implement the bridge. The method distributes bridge configuration data to the selected managed forwarding element.

A message-limiting mechanism for enabling computing devices to self-organize into groups based on network proximity can entail the transmission of values based on hierarchical evaluation such that only a computing device having a most extreme value continues to transmit. The values utilized can be randomly generated and their broadcast can facilitate the identification of computing devices that are proximate, by network distance. Each computing device can retain a most extreme value received, unless a value generated by that computing device itself is more extreme, in which case the computing device can continue periodic broadcasts of its value. Each computing device can report its retained values, or its own value if no values were retained, and groupings can be generated based on the values reported by the computing devices. The grouping of computing devices can then facilitate the identification of peers, including for purposes of downloading content from such peers.

A network node adapted to forward incoming data packets, the network node including a tag identifying unit, adapted to identify a tag of an incoming data packet as a replicate tag; a tag look-up module, adapted to retrieve from a tag table a number of replications and destinations for the replicate tag; a replicating engine, configured to replicate the incoming data packet according to the number of replications, thereby generating replicated data packets; and a forwarding unit, adapted to forward the replicated data packets to the destinations.