A meshed networking of access points in a utility network provides a more efficient and cost effective arrangement for communicating data between meters and the utility by linking the access points of multiple subnetworks for purposes of communicating with the utility. As a result, each individual subnetwork is not required to directly communicate with the utility. For those access points that are relieved of the need to directly communicate with the utility, the communication mechanism, e.g., cellular modem, can be eliminated, or deactivated, to thereby reduce capital expenditures and/or operational costs. Additionally, links to a WAN can be selectively activated or disabled to provision bandwidth, for example, on demand, to react to changing conditions in the subnetworks.

In one embodiment, when an ingress provider edge (PE) device of a computer network domain receives a frame at the ingress PE device destined to a destination media access control (MAC) address, it can determine whether the frame was received on a root or leaf Ethernet ingress segment, and also whether the destination MAC address is located via a root or leaf Ethernet segment. Accordingly, the ingress PE device may either drop or forward the frame based on the ingress Ethernet segment and destination MAC address Ethernet segment being either a root or a leaf, respectively.

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a method for acquiring, by an SDN switch, an exact flow entry, applied to an SDN network, where the SDN network includes an SDN controller and multiple SDN switches, the SDN controller communicates with each SDN switch in an inband communication manner, and the method includes: first establishing, by a first SDN switch, a reliable connection to the SDN controller; then, sending a first control message based on a packet corresponding to a protocol for the reliable connection; adding path information of the first SDN switch to the control message; and subsequently, also adding, by each SDN switch that receives the first control message, path information of each SDN switch to the first control message, so that finally, the SDN controller knows an entire path, so as to deliver a flow table to the first SDN switch.

Techniques for performing efficient topology failure detection in SDN networks are provided. In one embodiment, a computer system (e.g., an SDN controller) can transmit a first message to a first network device, where the first message instructs the first network device to begin sending probe packets to a second network device at a predetermined rate. The computer system can further transmit a second message to the second network device, where the second message instructs the second network device to monitor for the probe packets sent by the first network device and to notify the computer system when one or more of the probe packets are not received by the second network device. If the computer system receives such a notification from the second network device, the computer system can determine that a port, link, or node failure has occurred between the first and second network devices.

The present disclosure generally relates to the support of optical connection setup. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a technique of supporting provision of a connection via a data communication network of an optical network between packet network islands. A method embodiment comprises establishing a Border Gateway Protocol-Link State, BGP-LS, connection via the DCN between a first edge node of the first packet network island and a BGP-LS node in the optical network.

A non-transitory storage medium having stored therein a packet relay program for relaying a packet in a first sub-domain among a plurality of sub-domains in a service chain configured across the plurality of sub-domains is provided. The packet relay program causes a computer in the first sub-domain to perform a process. The process includes specifying a transmission destination on a basis of relay information with which identification information indicating a combination of a plurality of service functions included in the service chain, an index indicating an order for applying the service function, and the transmission destination are associated, changing the index included in the packet into a predetermined value when the specified transmission destination is a second sub-domain among the plurality of sub-domains, and transmitting the packet including the identification information included in the packet and the index of the predetermined value to the specified transmission destination.

In one embodiment, a multiple spanning tree (MST) region is defined in a network, where the MST region includes a plurality of network nodes interconnected by links. A MST cluster is defined within the MST region, where the MST cluster includes a plurality of network nodes selected from the plurality of network nodes of the MST region. A network node of the MST cluster generates one or more MST bridge protocol data units (BPDUs) that present the MST cluster as a single logical entity to network nodes of the MST region that are not included in the MST cluster, yet enables per-multiple spanning tree instance (per-MSTI) load balancing of traffic across inter-cluster links that connect network nodes included in the MST cluster and network nodes of the MST region that are not included in the MST cluster.

Methods and systems may be provided for installing a route entry associated with multicast traffic to a memory. Client devices may be notified of the route entry for advertisement by an active source device. The delivery group and delivery source may be retrieved from the information for the route entry. Multicast data trees may maintain delivery group and delivery source information for access.

According to one embodiment, a system includes at least one switching distributed line card (DLC) configured to apply Access Control Lists (ACLs) on each switching interface of the at least one switching DLC to direct certain received packets to at least one appliance DLC to have deep packet inspection services performed on the certain received packets, and at least one central switch fabric coupler (SFC) in communication with the at least one switching DLC, where the at least one appliance DLC and the at least one switching DLC are connected to the at least one central SFC. Other systems, methods and computer program products for providing scalable virtual appliance cloud (SVAC) services are described in more embodiments.

In one embodiment, a server includes a processor and logic integrated with and/or executable by the processor. The logic is configured to hash at least a portion of a packet according to a hashing algorithm to obtain a hash value. The logic is also configured to select an uplink with which to forward the packet based on the hash value. In another embodiment, a method includes hashing at least a portion of at least one packet according to a hashing algorithm to obtain a hash value using an accelerated network interface card (NIC) of a server. The accelerated NIC is configured to provide overlay functionality. The method also includes selecting an uplink, based on the hash value, from a plurality of uplinks available to send traffic out to a network using the accelerated NIC.