Statistics for VLAN bridging devices

[0002] The present invention relates in general to data processing networks, and in particular to a bridge utilized to couple a plurality of local area networks.

[0003] There are many different types of networks and network systems for sharing files and resources or for otherwise enabling communication between two or more computers. The term “network device” generally refers to a computer linked to a network via a network interface card (NIC), or to other devices that perform specialized functions in the network, such as repeaters or hubs, bridges, switches, routers and brouters, to name a few examples. Networks may be categorized based on various features and functions, such as message capacity, range over which nodes are distributed, node or computer types, node relationships, topology or logical and/or physical layout, architecture or structure based on cable type and data packet format, access possibilities, etc. For example, the range of a network refers to the distance over which nodes are distributed, such as local-area networks (LAN) within an office or floor of a building, wide-area networks (WANs) spanning across a college campus, or a city or a state and global-area networks (GANs) spanning across national boundaries.

[0004] A network may be expanded by using one or more repeaters, bridges, switches or similar type devices. A repeater is a device that moves all packets from one network segment to another by regenerating, re-timing, and amplifying the electrical signals. A bridge is a device that operates at the Data-Link Layer of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Reference Model and passes packets from one network to another and increases efficiency by filtering packets to reduce the amount of unnecessary packet propagation on each network segment. A switch is a network device similar in function to a multiple port bridge, but includes a plurality of ports for coupling to several similar networks for directing network traffic among the networks.

[0005] Some bridging devices, such as multiple port bridges, switches, routers or the like include the capability for a user to define one or more Virtual LANs (VLANs). Separate VLANs enable separate address space to be associated with each VLAN. The user or network administrator defines one or more VLANs by grouping one or more ports together in a VLAN definition, where the bridging device effectively separates each VLAN from the other ports. Bridging devices which are VLAN-capable forward traffic amongst ports which are members of the same VLAN.

[0006] Within a bridge, it is often desired to monitor the performance of the bridge using various statistics. Bridge statistics are also useful in diagnosing network problems. Standard-based statistics defined for traditional 802.1D bridges and defined in RFC 2674 (“Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges with Traffic Classes, Multicast Filtering and Virtual LAN Extensions”) are inadequate to describe the number of frames forwarded or discarded for IEEE 802.1Q VLAN bridges. In the traditional bridge model described in IEEE 802.1D the number of frames forwarded by a bridge port can be deduced from the number of frames received and the number of frames discarded on that particular port by the forwarding process. As illustrated in FIG. 3, there was only a single simple forwarding process implemented within the 802.1D bridge 301 coupling LANs 302 and 303. Frames are received from LAN 302 into port 1 by frame reception 304, and then sent to forwarding process 305, which will perform a filtering process as a function of filtering parameters from filtering database 306. This filtering, or discarding, of frames in the forwarding process 305 is performed with respect to one or more filtering rules, which are described within the 802.1D specification. As a result, the number of frames forwarded from port 1 will equal the number of frames sent from frame reception 304 to forwarding process 305 minus the number of frames filtered, or discarded, within forwarding process 305. Then, the number of frames transmitted from frame transmission 307 to port 2 will equal the sum of all frames forwarded to the transmitting port 307 from the forwarding process 305.

[0007] However, as will be described herein, the new 802.1Q-based bridge model is considerably more complicated, and therefore the standards-based statistics implemented within the traditional 802.1D bridge 301 are inadequate.

[0008] The present invention addresses the foregoing need by implementing counters within a bridge so that adequate forwarding and transmission statistics can be monitored. The counting of frame discards as a result of ingress rules implemented within the bridge, and as a result of egress rules implemented within the bridge, are utilized within the 802.1Q VLAN bridge model to calculate the number of frames forwarded and the number of frames transmitted.

[0009] The additional counters serve two functions. The first function is to completely identify the number of frames received on a bridge port and actually forwarded to other bridge ports. This is provided by taking into account the number of frames that are received on a bridge port, but subsequently discarded because of ingress rules, as defined by IEEE 802.1Q. The number of frames forwarded from the bridge port is calculated as the number of frames received on a bridge port minus the number of frames discarded for any of the following reasons:

[0010] 1. The forwarding process of the bridge mandates that the frame be discarded;

[0011] 2. The frame has an unacceptable frame type (i.e., is incompatible with the acceptable frame types parameter configured for the bridge port);

[0012] 3. The frame fails the ingress filtering rule configured for the bridge port; or

[0013] 4. Other VLAN-related reasons mandate discarding the frame (i.e., no VLAN registration exists on the bridge for the VLAN ID carried within the frame).

[0014] The second function of the additional counters is to identify the number of frames submitted for transmission from a bridge port. This number is a subset of the number of frames forwarded to a bridge port from all other ports. This value is provided by taking into account the number of frames that are discarded because of egress rules, as identified by IEEE 802.1Q. This number can be derived from the number of frames forwarded to the bridge port from all other ports minus the number of frames discarded for any of the following reasons.

[0015] 1. The port is not a member of the VLAN with which the frame is associated; or

[0016] 2. The port is configured to transmit frames as untagged, and the frame's VLAN tag indicates the presence of embedded MAC addresses which cannot be translated into a format compatible with the local media with which the port is associated.

[0017] The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention.

[0018] For a more complete understanding of the present invention, and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

[0019] FIG. 1 illustrates a bridged local area network configured in accordance with the present invention;

[0020] FIG. 2 illustrates an 802.1Q VLAN bridge model; and

[0021] FIG. 3 illustrates an 802.1D bridge model.

[0022] In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth such as specific network topologies, etc. to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without such specific details. In other instances, well-known circuits have been shown in block diagram form in order not to obscure the present invention in unnecessary detail. For the most part, details concerning timing considerations and the like have been omitted in as much as such details are not necessary to obtain a complete understanding of the present invention and are within the skills of persons of ordinary skill in the relevant art.

[0023] Refer now to the drawings wherein depicted elements are not necessarily shown to scale and wherein like or similar elements are designated by the same reference numeral through the several views.

[0024] Referring to FIG. 1, there is illustrated an example of the physical topology of a bridged local area network (LAN) 100. The component LANs 101-105 are interconnected by means of MAC bridges 106-110; each port of a MAC bridge connects to a single LAN. For example, one port within bridge 106 connects to LAN 101, while the other port within bridge 106 connects to LAN 103. IEEE LANs of all types can be connected together by using MAC bridges. Each individual LAN has its own independent MAC. The bridged local area network 100 created allows the interconnection of stations attached to separate LANs as if they were attached to a single LAN, although they are in fact attached to separate LANs, each with its own MAC. A MAC bridge operates below the MAC service boundary, and is transparent to protocols operating above this boundary, in the Logical Link Control (LLC) sublayer or Network Layer. For further discussion of MAC bridges, refer to IEEE 802.1D which is hereby incorporated by reference herein. For further discussion of bridged LANs, refer to IEEE 802.1Q, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein.

[0025] Essentially, a virtual bridged LAN permits devices within various ones of the LANs to be combined into their own virtual LAN through the bridges.

[0026] Referring to FIG. 2, there is illustrated one example of a bridge within a bridged LAN, such as the exemplary configuration in FIG. 1. Illustrated is bridge 106 connected through port 1 to LAN 101 and port 2 to LAN 103. Bridge 106 conforms with the 802.1Q VLAN bridge model as defined by the IEEE 802.1Q standard. The addition of ingress and egress processing means that the number of frames forwarded by any one bridge port can no longer be directly inferred from the number of frames received and the number of frames discarded by the forwarding process. To satisfy this problem, the present invention adds additional counters, which are needed to provide network administrators with information as to the numbers of frames actually submitted to the forwarding process (that is, frames received and which pass ingress rules 203), and the number of frames forwarded to a bridge port, but not transmitted (that is, which pass the forwarding process 205, but are not submitted for frame transmission 202). Essentially, the ingress rules 203 and the egress rules 204 can result in further discards of frame packets for various reasons, which are discussed in more detail in IEEE 802.1Q.

[0027] The present invention is implemented using counters, such as 201′ through 206′, within bridge 106, wherein such counters can be implemented in either software or hardware. An example of a software counter would be a piece of code that would increment a count by monitoring the reason for deallocating buffers in bridge 106 through which frame packets were temporarily stored. For example, if a frame was forwarded from one process to another, in other words, control of the buffer containing the frame is passed from one process to another, the software code would make note of such a forwarding and increment any counters associated with the activity. Likewise, if a frame was not forwarded for some reason, in other words the frame was filtered or discarded, then a software counter would make note of such incident and also increment if so programmed.

[0028] First, a software counter will be utilized to count the number of frames received at port one and frame reception 201. The number of frame packets discarded by forwarding process 205 as a result of filtering database rules 206 would also be counted. The additional counters needed for complete knowledge of what is occurring on a VLAN bridge 106 are described in the table below.

[0029] Note, the operational behavior of 802.1Q VLANs and the associated terminology is well defined in the specification referred to as the ANSI/IEEE Std. 802.1Q published by the American National Standards Institute and the Institute of Electronics Engineers.

[0030] As can be seen by the requirement for these additional counters, the ingress rules 203 result in frame discards for unacceptable frame types, VLAN membership mismatches, and other miscellaneous VLAN related reasons. Furthermore, the egress rules 204 also result in frame discards such as the discarding prior to transmission because the port to which the frames are to be transmitted is not a member of the VLAN with which the frame is associated, and the discarding of frames because the embedded MAC addresses could not be translated.

[0031] The present invention can then calculate the frames forwarded from port one by summing the number of frames which are received from port one but discarded as a result of the ingress rules 203 and the number of frames which are received from port one but discarded as a result of the forwarding process 205. Also calculated are the number of frames forwarded from all ports as the number of frames received from all ports minus the sum of the number of frames discarded as a result of the ingress rules of the ports minus the number of frames discarded by the forwarding process 205. Also calculated are the number of frames received in frame reception 201. Also calculated are the number of frames transmitted from port two as being equal to the sum of all frames forwarded to the egress port from the forwarding process 205 minus the frames discarded as a result of the egress rules 204. Naturally, these calculations can be performed in software by collecting the counts from the various counters and then summing and subtracting as described heretofore.

[0032] Although the present invention and its advantages have been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.