Router Control Plane Virtualization for On-Demand Redundancy
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Solution Overview
Problem
Network deployments without redundancy face challenges in maintenance and performance activities, as downtime is often unavoidable, especially in critical operations, and temporary redundancy is desired to minimize service disruptions.
Innovation Solution
A router and method that virtualize the control plane by instantiating a virtual instance in the cloud, allowing for offline services like upgrades and configuration changes without disrupting service, using a secure tunnel for communication and ensuring seamless state synchronization between the physical and virtual control planes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a router operates without redundancy, then device complexity is reduced and cost is lowered, but maintenance and performance activities require downtime and service continuity is disrupted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a virtual copy of the control plane in the cloud that can assume the active state when the physical control plane is offline. This virtual instance serves as a temporary replica that maintains service continuity without requiring permanent redundant hardware, thus resolving the contradiction between service continuity and device complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The patent moves the redundancy function from the physical hardware domain to the cloud/virtualization domain. By instantiating a virtual control plane in the cloud rather than requiring a physical backup router, the solution achieves redundancy in a different dimensional space, reducing on-premises device complexity while maintaining service continuity
2Reliability
If a virtual control plane is instantiated in the cloud, then maintenance can be performed without downtime, but network complexity and communication overhead increase due to secure tunnel establishment and state synchronization
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the control plane functionality from the physical router and instantiates it in the cloud environment. This separation allows the physical router to be maintained without downtime while the virtual control plane handles routing operations, achieving maintenance availability while managing complexity through functional extraction
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a secure tunnel as an intermediary communication channel between the physical router and the virtual control plane in the cloud. This mediator enables state synchronization and control plane communication without requiring complex direct integration, thus achieving maintenance availability while managing the complexity of cloud-physical router interaction
3Ease of manufacture
If the control plane is taken offline for services, then upgrades and configuration changes can be performed, but routing operations are disrupted until the control plane is restored
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary action by instantiating the virtual control plane in the cloud before taking the physical control plane offline. This advance preparation ensures that routing operations can immediately continue through the virtual instance when the physical control plane is taken offline for maintenance, achieving both maintenance accessibility and routing continuity
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a virtual copy of the control plane that can independently handle routing operations while the physical control plane is offline for maintenance. This copy ensures routing continuity during maintenance activities, resolving the contradiction between maintenance accessibility and routing continuity
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is a router (and method) for virtualizing a control plane of the router without redundancy. The router can include a processor, a data plane, a control plane, and a computer-readable storage medium having stored therein instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to request, a cloud service to instantiate a virtual instance of the control plane, receive a confirmation of instantiation of the virtual instance, transfer to the virtual instance of the control plane, an active state of the control plane, perform offline services (e.g., configuration change, operating system update, or firmware upgrade, etc.) and in response to completion of the offline services, receive the active state.