EVPN DCI Gateway Withdrawal for Partial-Failure Rerouting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) DCI networks face issues with partial failures causing traffic blackholing due to unaccounted failure scenarios, leading to significant traffic loss and prolonged convergence times.
Innovation Solution
Implement mechanisms for multihomed gateways to monitor link status and detect partial failures by withdrawing from affected multihoming groups, reducing traffic loss and improving convergence times.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multihomed gateways maintain connections to multiple data centers for resiliency, then bandwidth availability and fault tolerance improve, but the risk of partial failures causing traffic blackholing increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by having gateways proactively monitor the health of their connections to data centers and preemptively withdraw from multihoming groups when partial failures are detected. This prevents traffic blackholing before it occurs by removing failed gateways from the forwarding path in advance, rather than waiting for traffic loss to be detected and respond reactively.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs feedback mechanisms where gateways continuously monitor connection status and exchange health information with other gateways in the multihoming group. This feedback loop enables the network to detect partial failures and dynamically adjust routing decisions, withdrawing affected gateways from multihoming groups to prevent traffic blackholing while maintaining connections to healthy data centers.
2Device complexity
If traditional EVPN multihoming is used without failure detection mechanisms, then device complexity is reduced, but traffic loss during partial failures increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service by enabling gateways to autonomously monitor their own connection status and automatically withdraw from multihoming groups when partial failures are detected. This self-managed failure detection and response mechanism eliminates the need for complex external control systems while significantly reducing traffic loss during partial failures, as gateways independently manage their own health status and routing participation.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If gateways withdraw from multihoming groups upon any failure, then traffic blackholing is prevented, but network convergence time and availability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies segmentation by distinguishing between different failure types and applying appropriate withdrawal actions. Instead of a blanket withdrawal policy, the system segments failure scenarios into partial failures (where some connections remain healthy) and complete failures (where all connections to a data center are lost). Gateways selectively withdraw only from affected multihoming groups while maintaining participation in groups with healthy connections, preventing traffic blackholing without unnecessarily extending convergence time.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods that allow a multihomed gateway to monitor its membership in individual domains in an Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) Data Center Interconnect (DCI) Network, and issue withdrawals from multihoming groups associated with those domains based on this membership, are disclosed. According to embodiments, links between a local domain and a gateway, and between the gateway and a remote domain, can be monitored at the gateway. When the link between the gateway and a domain goes down the gateway may withdraw itself from any multihoming group associated with the domain to which the link has been lost.