Router Redundancy via Virtual Identifiers in Content-Routed Networks
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Solution Overview
Problem
Content-routed networks face challenges in providing fast and efficient router redundancy due to the complexity of routing based on content, leading to inefficiencies and slow convergence times when failures occur, as existing solutions either waste bandwidth or require significant computational resources.
Innovation Solution
The method involves organizing routers into redundancy groups with virtual router identifiers, assigning physical and virtual identifiers, and selecting an active router within each group to ensure seamless failover without affecting external routers, thereby optimizing message forwarding and reducing resource consumption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional router redundancy protocols (like VRRP) are used in content-routed networks, then router failover capability is provided, but bandwidth is wasted by forwarding messages to multiple routers and convergence time is slow due to the complexity of content-based routing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the network into redundancy groups, where each group contains multiple routers that can back each other up. This segmentation allows the system to provide redundancy without requiring all routers to participate in every routing decision, thereby reducing unnecessary bandwidth consumption while maintaining failover capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements local quality by having each router maintain specific subscription information locally within its redundancy group. This allows routers to make content-based routing decisions independently without querying other routers, reducing message forwarding overhead and bandwidth waste while maintaining fast convergence during failures.
2Reliability
If traditional router redundancy protocols are used in content-routed networks, then router failover capability is provided, but convergence time is slow due to the complexity of content-based routing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-establishing redundancy groups and pre-configuring subscription information at each router before failures occur. When a router failure happens, the backup router already has the necessary subscription data ready, enabling immediate takeover without the time-consuming process of re-learning routing information, thus achieving fast convergence.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses copying by having backup routers maintain copies of subscription information from their group members. This copying mechanism allows the backup router to immediately assume the routing role of a failed router without needing to re-query or relearn the subscription data, significantly reducing convergence time while maintaining reliability.
3Measurement precision
If content-based routing is implemented in networks, then precise content delivery to subscribers is achieved, but the complexity of routing decisions increases, making redundancy management difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the complex content routing problem into manageable redundancy groups. Each router within a group handles content routing for a specific subset of subscriptions, reducing the complexity of individual routing decisions while maintaining overall content routing accuracy through the coordinated operation of multiple specialized routers.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of providing router redundancy within a distributed network of routers, wherein messages are routed within the network based on virtual router identifiers, involves organizing the routers into one or more redundancy groups; assigning a physical identifier to each router in each of the redundancy groups; assigning one or more virtual identifiers to each redundancy group; selecting one of the routers of a particular redundancy group as a currently active router associated with a particular virtual identifier assigned to that redundancy group; advertising among the distributed network of routers for each redundancy group the physical identifier for the active router and information enabling other routers to determine the virtual identifier with which the currently active router is associated; and forwarding messages destined for a particular virtual router identifier to the currently active router based on the physical identifier of the currently active router.