Network Visibility Data Plane Tagging for Traffic Categorization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Analytic servers in network visibility systems face challenges in efficiently categorizing traffic due to insufficient compute resources and lack of necessary information, particularly when trying to identify the source circuit of data packets without access to ingress port information.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a data plane component in the network visibility system that can match data packets with user-defined rules to tag them with zone identifiers, allowing for efficient categorization and forwarding of packets to analytic servers, thereby offloading the categorization task and utilizing available information from the data plane component.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If analytic servers perform packet categorization, then categorization capability is achieved, but compute resources are insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a data plane component as an intermediary between the network and analytic servers. This component performs packet categorization using user-defined rules and tags packets with zone identifiers before forwarding them to analytic servers. This mediator approach transfers the categorization workload from resource-constrained analytic servers to a dedicated data plane component, resolving the contradiction between achieving categorization capability and having sufficient compute resources.
2Adaptability or versatility
If analytic servers categorize packets, then traffic organization is achieved, but information about ingress ports is unavailable
Solution Approach 1:
The data plane component performs preliminary categorization actions before packets reach analytic servers. By matching packets against user-defined rules that include ingress port information and other packet characteristics, the system tags packets with zone identifiers that encode this information. This preliminary action ensures that traffic organization is achieved while preserving information that would otherwise be unavailable to analytic servers.
3Productivity
If data plane component tags packets, then categorization efficiency is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the network visibility system into distinct functional components: a data plane component responsible for packet matching and tagging, and analytic servers responsible for analysis. The data plane component itself is segmented into rule matching logic and tagging functionality. This segmentation allows categorization efficiency to improve through specialized hardware/software in the data plane, while the added complexity is isolated to this dedicated component rather than affecting the entire system.
Data Source
AI summary
In one embodiment, a data plane component of the network visibility system can receive a data packet tapped from a source network. The data plane component can further match the data packet with an entry in a rule table, where the entry includes one or more match parameters, and in response to the matching can tag the data packet with a zone identifier defined in the entry. The data plane component can then forward the tagged data packet to an analytic server for analysis.