A control apparatus, includes a first unit configured to be capable of specifying an identification rule to identify a packet based on a user of a virtual network including a plurality of virtual nodes; and a second unit configured to be capable of sending an instruction to a physical node corresponding to each of the virtual nodes of the virtual network, wherein each of the virtual nodes includes a predetermined network function being capable of providing a first packet operation to the packet, wherein the instruction includes that the physical node provides a second packet operation to the packet so as to emulate the first packet operation.

This disclosure provides systems and methods for routing and topology management of computer networks with steerable beam antennas. A network controller can generate an input graph for a first time period. The input graph can have a plurality of vertices each representing a respective moving node and a plurality of edges each representing a possible link between a pair of moving nodes. The input graph also can include corresponding location information for each of the moving nodes during the first time period. A solver module can receive information corresponding to the input graph, a maximum degree for each vertex in the input graph, and a set of provisioned network flows. The solver module can determine a subgraph representing a network topology based on the input graph, the maximum degree for each vertex in the input graph, and the set of provisioned network flows, such that a number of edges associated with each vertex in the subgraph does not exceed the maximum degree for each vertex.

In general, the disclosure describes techniques for measuring edge-based quality of experience (QoE) metrics. For instance, a network device may construct a topological representation of a network, including indications of nodes and links connecting the nodes within the network. For each of the links, the network device may select a node device of the two node devices connected by the respective link to measure one or more QoE metrics for the respective link, with the non-selected node device not measuring the QoE metrics. In response to selecting the selected node device, the network device may receive a set of one or more QoE metrics for the respective link for data flows flowing from the selected node device to the non-selected node device. The network device may store the QoE metrics and determine counter QoE metrics for data flows flowing from the non-selected node device to the selected node device.

Techniques for utilizing Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controllers and network border leaf nodes of respective cloud computing networks to configure a data transmission route for a multicast group. Each border leaf node may maintain a respective external sources database, including a number of records indicating associations between a multicast data source, one or more respective border leaf nodes disposed in the same network as the multicast data source, and network capability information. A border leaf node, disposed in the same network as a multicast data source, may broadcast a local source discovery message to all border leaf nodes in remote networks to which it is communicatively coupled. A border leaf node may also communicate network capability information associated with one or more remote networks to a local SDN controller. The SDN controller may utilize the network capability information to configure a data transmission route to one or more destination nodes.

A network control system for managing a plurality of switching elements that implement a plurality of logical datapath sets. The network control system includes first and second controllers for generating requests for modifications to first and second logical datapath sets. The first controller is further for determining whether to make modifications to the first logical datapath set. The second controller is further for determining whether to make modifications to the second logical datapath set. Each controller is further for receiving logical control plane data that specifies logical datapath sets and for converting the logical control plane data to physical control plane data for propagating to the switching elements.

This disclosure describes techniques for improving speed of network convergence after node failure. In one example, a method includes storing, by SDN controller, an underlay routing table having routes for an underlay network of a data center and an overlay routing table having a set of routes for a virtual network of an overlay network for the data center, wherein the underlay network includes physical network switches, gateway routers, and a set of virtual routers executing on respective compute nodes of the data center; installing, within the underlay routing table, a route to a destination address assigned to a particular one of the virtual routers as an indicator of a reachability status to the particular virtual router in the underlay network. The SDN controller controls, based on presence or absence of the route within the underlay routing table, advertisement of the routes for the virtual network of the overlay network.

According to one or more embodiments of this disclosure, a network controller in a data center network establishes a translation table for in-band traffic in a data center network, the translation table resolves ambiguous network addresses based on one or more of a virtual network identifier (VNID), a routable tenant address, or a unique loopback address. The network controller device receives packets originating from applications and/or an endpoints operating in a network segment associated with a VNID. The network controller device translates, using the translation table, unique loopback addresses and/or routable tenant addresses associated with the packets into routable tenant addresses and/or unique loopback addresses, respectively.

A Self-Describing Packet block (SDPB) is defined that allows concurrent processing of various fixed headers in a packet block defined to take advantage of multiple cores in a networking node forwarding path architecture. SPDB allows concurrent processing of various pieces of header data, metadata, and conditional commands carried in the same data packet by checking a serialization flag set upon creation of the data packet, without needing to serialize the processing or even parsing of the packet. When one or h more commands in one or more sub-blocks may be processed concurrently, the one or more commands are distributed to multiple processing resources for processing the commands in parallel. This architecture allows multiple unique functionalities each with their own separate outcome (execution of commands, doing service chaining, performing telemetry, allows virtualization and path steering) to be performed concurrently with simplified packet architecture without incurring additional encapsulation overhead.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer-readable storage media, optimizing interior gateway protocol (IGP) metrics using reinforcement learning (RL) for a network domain. The system can receive a topology (G) of a network domain, a set of flows (F), and an objective function. The system can optimize, using reinforcement learning, the objective function based on the received topology and the one or more flows F. The system can determine updated IGP metrics based on the optimization of the objective function. The IGP metrics for the metric domain may be updated with the updated IGP metrics.

Instantiating a Network Service described by a Forwarding Graph comprising Virtual Network Functions, VNF instances, which are interconnected via communication links. This includes splitting the Forwarding Graph into n VNF Elementary Graphs, VNF EGs. Each of the VNF EGs for a VNF Instance includes routing information for forwarding, by that VNF instance and to another VNF instance, packets output by that VNF instance based on a packet class identifier included in the packet. Each of the VNF EGs is transmitted to the corresponding VNF instance for that VNF EG. Each of the VNF instances, when outputting a packet handled by it, then transmits the packet to a next VNF instance based on the packet class identifier included in the packet.