A hierarchical wireless network is provided with a mesh backbone network portion and a switching tree network portion, The mesh backbone network portion includes first tier nodes each having at least one wireless link to another first tier node, The first tier nodes execute a link-state protocol for routing packets, The switching tree network portion includes second tier nodes each having a single wireless link to one first tier node and at least one wireless link to one third tier node, and third tier nodes each having a single wireless link to one second tier node. The second tier and the third tier nodes execute switching rules for switching packets,

A method provides an information centric network with a software defined network based on an information centric networking protocol on top of a physical network based on an internet protocol. A controller in the software defined network receives a first packet of an object request in the information centric network. The controller encodes a message ID indicating an object source of the object request into a header of the first packet. The controller installs forwarding rules on forwarding elements in the physical network such that further packets of the object request are forwarded according to the installed forwarding rules by the forwarding elements rewriting headers of the further packets.

A method (400) for providing support for elasticity within a domain of a multi-domain network. The method comprises receiving (401) information for a requested virtual link forming part of an end-to-end path across the multi-domain network; wherein the information of the virtual link comprises a service parameter and an elasticity parameter. The method further comprises selecting (402) a physical path (150) corresponding to the virtual link on which to send traffic. The physical path is selected based on a service parameter and an elasticity parameter of the physical path.

For logical multicasting in overlay networks, at a data processing system, an original unicast packet is received from a first component in a first computing node in an overlay network. To cause multicasting in the overlay network the received original unicast packet was unicast by the first computing node only to the data processing system, and a multicast data structure for the overlay network is maintained only by the data processing system, the multicast data structure containing information of each receiver that is configured to receive unicast packets during logical multicasting in the overlay network. From a set of subscriber receivers in the multicast data structure, a subset of the subscriber receivers is selected. A copy of the original unicast packet is unicast to each subscriber receiver in the subset.

Techniques are described for automatic discovery of two or more virtual service instances configured to apply a given service to a packet in a software-defined networking (SDN)/network functions virtualization (NFV) environment. Virtual service instances may be deployed as virtual entities hosted on one or more physical devices to offer individual services or chains of services from a service provider. The use of virtual service instances enables automatic scaling of the services on-demand. The techniques of this disclosure enable automatic discovery by a gateway network device of virtual service instances for a given service as load balancing entities. According to the techniques, the gateway network device automatically updates a load balancing group for the given service to include the discovered virtual service instances on which to load balance traffic for the service. In this way, the disclosed techniques provide auto-scaling and auto-discovery of services in an SDN/NFV environment.

Presented herein are techniques for use in a network environment that includes one or more service zones, each service zone including at least one instance of an in-line application service to be applied to network traffic and one or more routers to direct network traffic to the at least one service, and a route target being assigned to a unique service zone to serve as a community value for route import and export between routers of other service zones, destination networks or source networks via a control protocol. An edge router in each service zone or destination network advertises routes by its destination network prefix tagged with its route target. A service chain is created by importing and exporting of destination network prefixes by way of route targets at edge routers of the service zones or source networks.

A network element of a software-defined network includes a processing system for maintaining a control system for managing data. The control system is maintained in accordance with configuration data received from a controller of the software-defined network. In a case where the control system has no entry corresponding to frame information related to a received data frame, the processing system checks whether status information indicates availability of the frame information to the controller. If the status information does not indicate the availability, the processor system arranges the frame information to be available to the controller and updates the status information to indicate the availability. Thus, data traffic related to data-driven learning and occurring between the network element and the controller can be reduced with the aid of the above-mentioned status information.

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media for OAM in overlay networks. In response to receiving a packet associated with an OAM operation from a device in an overlay network, the system generates an OAM packet. The system can be coupled with the overlay network and can include a tunnel endpoint interface associated with an underlay address and a virtual interface associated with an overlay address. The overlay address can be an anycast address assigned to the system and another device in the overlay network. Next, the system determines that a destination address associated with the packet is not reachable through the virtual interface, the destination address corresponding to a destination node in the overlay network. The system also determines that the destination address is reachable through the tunnel endpoint interface. The system then provides the underlay address associated with the tunnel endpoint interface as a source address in the OAM packet.

Systems and methods for connecting devices via a virtual global network are disclosed. In one embodiment the network system may comprise a first device in communication with a first endpoint device and a second device in communication with a second endpoint device. The first and second devices may be connected with a communication path. The communication path may comprise one or more intermediate tunnels connecting each endpoint device to one or more intermediate access point servers and one or more control servers.

A fabric manager includes: a processing unit having a service chain creation module configured to create a service chain by connecting some of a plurality of nodes via virtual links; wherein the some of the plurality of nodes represent respective network components of an auxiliary network configured to obtain packets from a traffic production network; and wherein the service chain is configured to control an order of the network components represented by the some of the plurality of nodes packets are to traverse.