Network Appliance Priority-Based Packet Dropping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional network appliances indiscriminately drop data packets during periods of high congestion, disrupting network functionality, especially when handling multiple streams of traffic with varying priorities.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a network appliance that assigns priority measures to different streams of network traffic on a per-flow map basis, allowing selective dropping of low-priority packets while ensuring high-priority traffic is forwarded, and using flow meters to manage traffic rates and cascade excess traffic across multiple tools.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If conventional network appliances drop packets during high congestion, then traffic volume is reduced, but network functionality is disrupted and high-priority traffic is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by assigning different priority levels to different flow maps, allowing the system to treat different traffic streams differently during congestion. High-priority flow maps are preserved while low-priority flow maps are dropped, ensuring that critical network functionality is maintained even when traffic volume must be reduced.
2Loss of information
If inline devices monitor all traffic streams equally, then comprehensive visibility is achieved, but resource consumption increases during congestion
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial action by having the inline device fully process high-priority flow maps while partially processing or dropping low-priority flow maps during congestion. This approach maintains visibility of critical traffic while reducing resource consumption on non-critical traffic, optimizing the balance between monitoring comprehensiveness and resource availability.
3Ease of operation
If priority measures are assigned to flow maps, then selective packet dropping is enabled, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by introducing priority measures as a new parameter for flow maps. This parameter allows the system to differentiate between critical and non-critical traffic streams, enabling selective packet dropping based on priority levels. The addition of this parameter provides granular control over traffic management during congestion without requiring fundamental changes to the device architecture.
Data Source
AI summary
A network appliance deployed in a visibility fabric may intelligently drop certain low priority traffic to avoid indiscriminate dropping of data packets across all flow maps during periods of high congestion. More specifically, the network appliance may determine the data packets of a flow map should be dropped based on priority measures assigned on a per-flow map basis. Such a technique enables the network appliance to drop low priority traffic and forward high priority traffic downstream. Also introduced herein are techniques for metering traffic in order to gain better control over the traffic that is forwarded to an egress port of a network appliance. Because a network tool connected to the egress port can become easily overwhelmed, the network appliance may filter the traffic based on the priority of the flow maps to ensure that the network tool does not receive more traffic than can be handled.