Ethernet Virtual Circuit SLA Detection via Synthetic Traffic Saturation
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Solution Overview
Problem
In Ethernet Virtual Circuit environments, enforcing bandwidth quotas as part of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) requires administrative efforts and can lead to management burdens, especially when updating Committed Information Rate (CIR) and Excess Information Rate (EIR) values across multiple devices, and existing standards like RFC 2544 are time-consuming in detecting packet loss.
Innovation Solution
A method to automatically detect SLA settings by generating synthetic packets to saturate the data path, collecting traffic samples, and determining CIR and EIR values, allowing for real-time monitoring and enforcement without propagating new values to devices, enabling adjustment to changing network conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If administrative efforts are used to propagate SLA settings into devices, then SLA enforcement is achieved, but management burden increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically discovers and enforces SLA settings by having devices self-configure through automated propagation mechanisms. The network infrastructure itself performs the configuration propagation without requiring manual administrative intervention at each device, allowing the system to serve itself in configuring SLA parameters across the network.
Solution Approach 2:
A centralized system performs multiple functions including SLA setting propagation, monitoring, and enforcement across multiple devices simultaneously. This universal system replaces the need for device-specific manual configuration, consolidating management tasks into a single multi-functional platform that handles SLA enforcement network-wide.
2Measurement precision
If new devices are added to verify and enforce SLA settings, then SLA monitoring capability is improved, but administrative and management steps increase
Solution Approach 1:
SLA settings and enforcement mechanisms are pre-configured and automatically propagated to devices before they are needed for monitoring. This preliminary setup eliminates the need for manual configuration steps when adding new monitoring devices, as the system automatically prepares and distributes the necessary SLA parameters in advance.
Solution Approach 2:
A centralized management system acts as an intermediary that automatically handles the propagation of SLA settings to new devices. This intermediary eliminates the need for direct manual configuration of each device, streamlining the process of adding new monitoring capabilities by mediating the configuration distribution automatically.
3Measurement precision
If RFC 2544 methodology is used to detect packet loss, then performance criteria are validated, but detection time increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system skips the time-consuming incremental traffic increase process of traditional RFC 2544 testing by directly generating traffic at saturation levels. This rushing through of the testing process achieves rapid detection of packet loss and performance metrics without the gradual escalation steps, significantly reducing detection time while maintaining measurement validity.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of using the complete gradual traffic increase methodology, the system applies excessive action by immediately generating traffic at or above saturation levels. This partial application of the testing methodology—skipping the gradual increase phase and going directly to high-volume traffic generation—achieves rapid performance validation while still detecting packet loss effectively.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of automatically detecting the service level agreement settings in an Ethernet virtual circuit (EVC) carrying user packets comprises generating synthetic packets different from the user packets, on a data path in the EVC at a level sufficiently high to saturate the EVC. This accelerates the detection of actual effective values for the Committed Information Rate (CIR) and the Excess Information Rate (EIR) by triggering traffic shaping devices in the data path to enforce the CIR and EIR settings configured for those devices. A plurality of traffic samples are collected from the data path during a sampling period that is long enough to allow the collection of at least two valid traffic samples, where a valid traffic sample is the amount of user packets measured between two consecutive losses of synthetic packets. The CIR and EIR values enforced by the traffic shaping devices are determined from the collected samples.