SDN Root Cause Analysis Using Flow Statistics
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing network monitoring solutions for SDN networks require expensive equipment and significant resources, leading to high capital and operational expenditures, and fail to scale effectively with growing network complexity, often resulting in inadequate monitoring coverage.
Innovation Solution
A method that determines the root cause of performance issues in SDN networks using existing network information, such as flow path data and statistics, without deploying specialized monitoring equipment, leveraging machine learning techniques to detect and predict issues.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If expensive monitoring equipment and resource-intensive monitoring methods are deployed, then network monitoring capability is improved, but capital expenditure and operational expenditure increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables network switches to self-report flow statistics and performance data to the controller without requiring external monitoring equipment. The monitoring system leverages existing network infrastructure components to provide monitoring services, eliminating the need for separate expensive monitoring hardware and reducing operational costs.
2Reliability
If active monitoring components such as DPI nodes and probing equipment are deployed, then network monitoring coverage is improved, but device complexity and configuration requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the monitoring functionality from separate active monitoring components and integrates it into the existing SDN controller and switch architecture. By utilizing flow statistics already collected by switches for forwarding decisions, the system eliminates the need for separate DPI nodes, packet classifiers, and filters, thereby reducing device complexity and configuration requirements.
3Loss of information
If traditional network monitoring solutions are implemented, then some network information is collected, but network resources are consumed significantly for normalization and analysis
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the information collection and analysis functions into the centralized SDN controller. Flow statistics are collected by switches and transmitted to the controller, which performs root cause analysis by correlating flow path information with performance metrics. This consolidation eliminates the need for distributed normalization processes and reduces overall network resource consumption.
4Reliability
If existing network monitoring solutions are deployed, then monitoring is provided for current network size, but scalability is limited as networks grow larger and more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal monitoring framework based on standardized flow statistics that can be applied to networks of any size or complexity. The SDN controller's root cause analysis mechanism works consistently across different network scales by leveraging the programmable nature of SDN and the standardized OpenFlow protocol, enabling the system to adapt to growing network requirements without fundamental redesign.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method is implemented by a computing device to determine a root cause of a performance issue in a software defined networking (SDN) network using flow statistics maintained by hosts in the network. The method includes receiving a request to perform a root cause analysis (RCA) for a first flow in the network that is experiencing a performance issue, obtaining flow path information for flows in the network, and obtaining flow statistics for the flows in the network, where the flow statistics are end-to-end flow statistics maintained by one or more hosts in the network. The method further includes executing an RCA algorithm for the first flow, where the RCA algorithm determines a root cause of a performance issue experienced by the first flow based on the flow path information and the flow statistics.