Method and apparatus for accelerating failover of VPN traffic in an MPLS provider network
US8107363B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | May 21, 2004 |
| Grant date | Jan 31, 2012 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 25, 2028 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L45/64
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Failover of VPN traffic between MPLS tunnels may be accelerated by determining a main and a standby MPLS tunnel for each VPN and passing both the main and standby MPLS tunnel information to the forwarding plane of a network element configured to implement the VPN. In the event of failover of a main MPLS tunnel interface, the forwarding plane may be instructed to use the standby MPLS tunnel instead of the main MPLS tunnel. Since the standby MPLS tunnel has already been determined, and information associated with the standby MPLS tunnel has already been provided to the forwarding plane, it is not necessary to recompute a new MPLS tunnel or reprogram the forwarding plane using the new MPLS tunnel information. By removing control plane operations and control plane-forwarding plane interaction from the handling of failovers, the failover recovery time may be accelerated to under 50 ms, to thereby enable VPN connections to handle time sensitive traffic.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.