Distributed Call Path Analysis for Network Bottleneck Remediation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing solutions fail to effectively analyze and address network performance degradation on distributed applications by tracing the impact of degraded network devices on service traffic, making it difficult to identify and ameliorate negative performance impacts.
Innovation Solution
An analytics system processes telemetry and network flow data to identify end-to-end call paths and correlate them with underlying network paths, allowing for the identification of critical paths contributing to application latency, and reconfigures the network or redeploy services to mitigate performance issues.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If existing solutions trace effects on individual services to analyze network performance degradation, then service-level analysis is simplified, but end-to-end call path performance impact cannot be quickly identified
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the distributed application into individual service components and traces their call paths through the network. By breaking down the end-to-end application into service-level segments and analyzing their network paths separately, the system can identify which specific service calls are experiencing performance degradation while maintaining the ability to reconstruct the complete end-to-end picture.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a nested analysis structure where service-level call paths are nested within end-to-end application call paths. Each service call is analyzed as a nested component of the larger application workflow, allowing the system to drill down from high-level application performance to detailed service-level diagnostics and back up again to assess overall impact.
2Reliability
If the system monitors all network devices for performance degradation, then comprehensive coverage is achieved, but the complexity of analyzing and correlating data increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and focuses analysis on the specific network paths that are actually traversed by distributed application call flows. Rather than analyzing all network devices uniformly, the patent extracts only the relevant network paths associated with application services, reducing the complexity of data correlation while maintaining comprehensive monitoring coverage for application performance.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an application-aware dimension to network performance monitoring by mapping network device performance data to application call paths. This dimensional transformation allows the system to correlate network metrics with application performance in a structured way, reducing analysis complexity by organizing data along application workflow dimensions rather than purely network topology dimensions.
3Productivity
If the system redeploys services to different compute nodes to mitigate performance issues, then application performance is improved, but the time and resources required for redeployment increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of application call paths and network performance to identify potential performance bottlenecks before they significantly impact the application. By proactively detecting performance degradation patterns and predicting which service calls are at risk, the system can prepare remediation strategies in advance, reducing the actual response time when performance issues occur.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic service deployment where service instances can be moved between compute nodes based on real-time network performance conditions. The system continuously monitors network path performance and dynamically adjusts service placement to optimize call path performance, allowing flexible adaptation without fixed service-node assignments.
Data Source
AI summary
In general, techniques are described for managing a distributed application based on call paths among the multiple services of the distributed application that traverse underlying network infrastructure. In an example, a method comprises determining, by a computing system, and for a distributed application implemented with a plurality of services, a call path from an entry endpoint service of the plurality of services to a terminating endpoint service of the plurality of services; determining, by the computing system, a corresponding network path for each pair of adjacent services from a plurality of pairs of services that communicate for the call path; and based on a performance indicator for a network device of the corresponding network path meeting a threshold, performing, by the computing system, one or more of: reconfiguring the network; or redeploying one of the plurality of services to a different compute node of the compute nodes.