Redundant Ring Automatic Recovery via Probing Token
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing redundant Totem ring networks fail completely when a single node, such as a network interface card, fails, requiring administrative intervention and causing message blocking for several seconds before recovery, which affects network performance.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a multi-token based recovery protocol that initiates a probing token to circulate around the failed ring, restarting and re-transmitting it until complete, then switching to a recovery token to enable nodes and disable the probing token, thereby automatically recovering the ring without administrative intervention and preventing message blocking.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a single node fails in a redundant ring network, then the ring becomes unhealthy and requires recovery, but the whole ring fails and causes message blocking for several seconds before recovery
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary health validation by circulating a probing token around the failed ring before re-enabling it. This preliminary action ensures the ring is healthy before resuming normal operations, preventing message blocking caused by re-enabling a still-failed ring.
Solution Approach 2:
A probing token is introduced as an intermediary to validate ring health. The token circulates through all nodes in the failed ring and returns to confirm health status, acting as a mediator between the failure detection and ring re-enabling processes.
2Reliability
If administrative intervention is required to reset and re-enable failed rings, then recovery can be achieved, but network performance degrades due to manual intervention requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service automatic recovery by having nodes autonomously detect ring failures, validate health using probing tokens, and re-enable the ring without administrative intervention. This eliminates manual operations while maintaining reliable recovery.
Solution Approach 2:
The probing token mechanism provides feedback about ring health status to initiating nodes. When the token completes circulation and returns, it confirms the ring is healthy, enabling automatic decision-making for ring re-enabling without human intervention.
3Reliability
If the multicast protocol blocks messages during ring reactivation, then failed rings can be re-enabled, but network throughput decreases for five to ten seconds
Solution Approach 1:
Health validation using probing tokens is performed as a preliminary action before re-enabling the ring. This ensures the ring is actually healthy before resuming multicast operations, preventing repeated failure cycles that would cause prolonged throughput degradation.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for automatically recovering from a failure event in one or more nodes of a redundant ring network are provided. An indication is received at a first ring of nodes that an associated second ring of nodes has failed. A probing token is circulated around the second ring of nodes while a probing timer is started. The injecting a probing token and starting a probing timer are repeated if the probing timer expires before the probing token circulates completely around the second ring of nodes. A recovery token is circulated around the second ring of nodes to enable each node of the second ring of nodes and to disable the probing timer if the probing token circulates completely around the second ring of nodes.