Cross-Board Forwarding Load Balancing via Hash Parameter Modification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing cross-board forwarding technologies face challenges in achieving balanced traffic distribution, leading to irregular egress traffic and potential packet loss due to uneven bandwidth utilization across service card ports, which reduces the overall forwarding capability.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus that evenly distribute ingress port traffic across all cross-board egress ports by grouping and statistically managing traffic flow through a switching board card and an egress service board card, ensuring each egress port receives a balanced load, preventing packet loss and maximizing bandwidth utilization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If common hash manner is used to share ingress traffic to cross-board egress, then forwarding process is simple, but traffic distribution is uneven causing packet loss
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the hashing parameters by including both 5-tuple information (source IP, destination IP, source port, destination port, protocol) and egress port information in the hash calculation. This modified parameter set ensures that traffic is distributed evenly across multiple egress ports while maintaining deterministic forwarding behavior, resolving the contradiction between simple forwarding and balanced traffic distribution
Solution Approach 2:
The patent dynamically selects which egress ports to use based on real-time traffic distribution status. When certain egress ports become congested or reach capacity, the system dynamically adjusts the hash mapping to redirect traffic to underutilized egress ports, ensuring continuous balanced distribution without packet loss
2Productivity
If traffic is concentrated on few cross-board egress ports, then forwarding capability of those ports is maximized, but overall bandwidth utilization is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the ingress traffic into multiple balanced streams by using enhanced hash functions that map different traffic flows to different egress ports. This segmentation ensures that the total ingress traffic is divided evenly across all available cross-board egress ports, maximizing overall bandwidth utilization while maintaining high forwarding capability on each port
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms to monitor traffic distribution across egress ports and dynamically adjusts forwarding decisions. When traffic concentration is detected on certain ports, the feedback loop triggers rebalancing actions to redistribute traffic evenly, ensuring both high forwarding capability and optimal bandwidth utilization
Data Source
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AI summary
The present invention provides a cross-board forwarding method and apparatus. The method comprises: distributing traffic of the ingress port of an ingress service board card evenly to all cross-board egress ports of the ingress service board; and forwarding the traffic of the cross-board egress ports of the ingress service board through a switching board card and an egress service board card in turn.