CN109995654B

CN109995654B - Method and device for transmitting data based on tunnel

Info

Publication number: CN109995654B
Application number: CN201711470852.7A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 张平平; 陈志伟; 夏迎春; 孙军欢
Original assignee: ZTE Corp
Current assignee: ZTE Corp
Priority date: 2017-12-29
Filing date: 2017-12-29
Publication date: 2022-05-20
Anticipated expiration: 2037-12-29
Also published as: CN109995654A; WO2019129236A1

Abstract

A method and apparatus for tunneling data are disclosed. The method for transmitting data based on the tunnel comprises the following steps: tunnel encapsulation is carried out on the message in the overlay network, and an outlet of the tunnel is set as a loop back port; in the basic network, the message encapsulated by the tunnel is looped back at the loop back port, an equivalent multi-path routing protocol (ECMP) routing table is searched according to the destination IP address of the message encapsulated by the tunnel to obtain a plurality of next hop IP addresses, and the message encapsulated by the tunnel is forwarded through a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next hop IP addresses. The technical scheme can provide a tunnel transmission scheme under an equivalent multipath routing protocol scene, and reduces the quantity of tunnel resources in a bottom chip of the superposed network equipment while realizing multiport forwarding.

Description

Method and device for transmitting data based on tunnel

Technical Field

The present invention relates to the field of communications technologies, and in particular, to a method and an apparatus for transmitting data based on a tunnel.

Background

Tunneling is a way of transferring data between networks by using an infrastructure of an internetwork, and is implemented by a Tunneling protocol conforming to an organization standard such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The data (or payload) communicated using tunneling techniques may be data frames or packets of different protocols. Tunneling protocols re-encapsulate data frames or packets of other protocols and then send through tunnels. The new header provides routing information for delivering encapsulated payload data over the internet. Typical tunneling techniques include: Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), Virtual Extensible local area network (VXLAN), Transparent Interconnection of multiple Links (TRILL), and the like.

The infrastructure network (Underlay network) is a network of a data center network basic forwarding architecture, is a physical basic layer, and includes all existing traditional network technologies as long as a route between any two points of the data center network can be reached. An Overlay network (Overlay network) is a virtualization framework overlaid on a network architecture, is constructed by logical nodes and logical links, and has an independent control plane and a forwarding plane. The Overlay network realizes the bearing of an application layer on the Underlay network, realizes the service separation with other networks, realizes the trial extension of a physical network to a cloud and a virtualization network, ensures that the cloud resource pooling capability can get rid of the heavy limitation of the physical network, and realizes the cloud network convergence.

Equal-Cost Multi-path Routing (ECMP) is a Routing technique. In a network environment where a plurality of different links reach the same destination address, if a conventional routing technology is used, a data packet sent to the destination address can only utilize one link, and other links are in a backup state or an invalid state, and a certain time is required for mutual switching in a dynamic routing environment, whereas the ECMP can simultaneously use a plurality of links in the network environment, thereby not only increasing transmission bandwidth, but also backing up data transmission of the invalid link without time delay or packet loss. The ECMP has the greatest characteristic of realizing the purposes of multipath load balancing and link backup under equivalent conditions, and basically supports the ECMP function in both static routing and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF).

With the increase of service deployment, the number of tunnels required to be established by the data center is increased. If the underwlay network applies ECMP techniques, the hardware resources required to establish the tunnel in the Overlay network will also be more. As shown in fig. 1, when a VXLAN tunnel is created in an ECMP scenario, tunnels need to be created according to an exit corresponding to each next hop in an ECMP group, but the number of tunnels on a chip bottom layer is limited, so that the number of tunnels supported by an Overlay network in the ECMP scenario is limited.

Disclosure of Invention

The technical problem to be solved by the embodiments of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for transmitting data based on a tunnel, which can provide a tunnel transmission scheme in an equivalent multipath routing protocol scenario, and reduce the number of tunnel resources in a bottom chip of an overlay network device while implementing multiport forwarding.

The embodiment of the invention provides a method for transmitting data based on a tunnel, which comprises the following steps:

tunnel encapsulation is carried out on the message in the overlay network, and an outlet of the tunnel is set as a loop back port;

in the basic network, the message encapsulated by the tunnel is looped back at the loop back port, an equivalent multi-path routing protocol (ECMP) routing table is searched according to the destination IP address of the message encapsulated by the tunnel to obtain a plurality of next hop IP addresses, and the message encapsulated by the tunnel is forwarded through a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next hop IP addresses.

The embodiment of the invention provides a device for transmitting data based on a tunnel, which comprises:

the tunnel encapsulation module is used for tunnel encapsulation of the message in the overlay network and setting the exit of the tunnel as a loop back port;

a loopback module, configured to loop back the tunneled packet at the loopback interface in a base network, and send the tunneled packet to a route forwarding module;

and the route forwarding module is used for searching an equivalent multi-path routing protocol (ECMP) routing table according to the destination IP address of the message subjected to tunnel encapsulation in a basic network to obtain a plurality of next-hop IP addresses and forwarding the message subjected to tunnel encapsulation through a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next-hop IP addresses.

Compared with the prior art, the method and the device for transmitting data based on the tunnel provided by the embodiment of the invention have the advantages that the tunnel encapsulation is carried out on the message in the overlay network, and the exit of the tunnel is set as the loopback port; in the basic network, the message encapsulated by the tunnel is looped back at the loop-back port, an equivalent multi-path routing protocol ECMP routing table is searched to obtain a plurality of next hop IP addresses, and the message encapsulated by the tunnel is forwarded out through a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next hop IP addresses. The technical scheme of the embodiment of the invention can realize multi-port forwarding in the scene that the ECMP technology is applied to the Underlay network and simultaneously reduce the quantity of tunnel resources in a bottom chip of the superposed network equipment.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a VXLAN tunnel created in an ECMP scenario in the background art;

fig. 2 is a flowchart of a method for transmitting data based on a tunnel according to embodiment 1 of the present invention;

fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of an apparatus for transmitting data based on a tunnel according to embodiment 2 of the present invention;

fig. 4 is a flowchart of a method for transmitting data based on a tunnel according to example 1 of the present invention (inner loop);

fig. 5 is a flowchart of a method for transmitting data based on a tunnel according to example 2 of the present invention (outer loop method);

fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of creating a tunnel in an overlay network in example 3 of the present invention.

Detailed Description

In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present invention more apparent, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be noted that the embodiments and features of the embodiments in the present application may be arbitrarily combined with each other without conflict.

Example 1

As shown in fig. 2, an embodiment of the present invention provides a method for transmitting data based on a tunnel, including:

step S210, tunnel encapsulation is carried out on the message in the overlay network, and the exit of the tunnel is set as a loop back port;

step S220, in the basic network, looping back the message packaged by the tunnel at the loop back port, searching an equivalent multi-path routing protocol (ECMP) routing table according to the destination IP address of the message packaged by the tunnel to obtain a plurality of next hop IP addresses, and forwarding the message packaged by the tunnel through a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next hop IP addresses;

in one embodiment, before the exit of the tunnel is provided as a loopback port, the method further comprises:

establishing an inner ring port, and configuring Media Access Control (MAC) address offset for the inner ring port; the MAC address offset is used for enabling a source MAC address and a destination MAC address of a message sent out by the inner ring port to be different;

the export of tunnel sets up to the loopback mouth, includes: setting the outlet of the tunnel as an inner annular opening;

looping back the message encapsulated by the tunnel at the loop back port, including:

sending the message encapsulated by the tunnel out of the inner ring opening and receiving the message back from the inner ring opening again;

establishing a first outer ring opening and a second outer ring opening, and directly connecting the first outer ring opening with the second outer ring opening; adding the first outer ring interface to a first virtual route forwarding instance VRF1, and adding the second outer ring interface to a second virtual route forwarding instance VRF 2; recording the statically configured or dynamically learned ECMP routes in a routing table within VRF2, and importing the ECMP routes within VRF2 into the VRF 1; configuring a Media Access Control (MAC) address offset for the first outer ring port; the MAC address offset is used for enabling a source MAC address and a destination MAC address of a message sent out by the first outer ring port to be different;

set up the export in tunnel as the loop mouth, include: setting an outlet of the tunnel as a first outer annular opening;

the looping back the message encapsulated by the tunnel at the looping back port includes:

sending the message subjected to tunnel encapsulation out at the first outer ring opening and receiving the message back from the second outer ring opening;

in an embodiment, the tunnel encapsulation for the packet includes:

performing tunnel encapsulation of a corresponding encapsulation rule on the message according to the service characteristics of the message;

wherein, the service characteristics of the message include: a destination IP address and/or a destination Media Access Control (MAC) address of the message;

wherein the encapsulation rule comprises: multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) encapsulation rules, virtual extensible local area network (VXLAN) encapsulation rules or transparent interconnection of lots of links (TRILL) encapsulation rules.

In one embodiment, the inner ring port is a high bandwidth port or a port group formed by multi-port link bundling;

in one embodiment, the first outer ring port and the second outer ring port are high bandwidth ports or port groups bundled by multi-port links.

In the technical solution of this embodiment, by setting the exit of the tunnel as the loopback port in the Overlay (Overlay) network, resources of multiple tunnels in the bottom chip of the network device can be reduced to one tunnel resource in the technical solution of this embodiment, and by searching multiple next hops of the ECMP route in the base (Underlay) network, the packet can be forwarded from multiple forwarding exits, thereby achieving the forwarding performance of multiple tunnels in the Overlay (Overlay) network.

Example 2

As shown in fig. 3, an embodiment of the present invention provides an apparatus for transmitting data based on a tunnel, including:

a tunnel encapsulation module 301, configured to perform tunnel encapsulation on a packet in a overlay network, and set an exit of a tunnel as a loopback port;

a loopback module 302, configured to loop back the tunneled packet at the loopback interface in a base network, and send the tunneled packet to a route forwarding module;

a route forwarding module 303, configured to search an equal-value multipath routing protocol ECMP routing table according to the destination IP address of the packet encapsulated by the tunnel in the base network to obtain multiple next-hop IP addresses, and forward the packet encapsulated by the tunnel through multiple forwarding ports corresponding to the multiple next-hop IP addresses.

In one embodiment, the apparatus further comprises a configuration module;

the configuration module is used for establishing an inner ring opening and configuring Media Access Control (MAC) address offset for the inner ring opening; the MAC address offset is used for enabling a source MAC address and a destination MAC address of a message sent by the inner ring port to be different;

the tunnel encapsulation module is used for setting the exit of the tunnel as a loop back port in the following mode: setting the outlet of the tunnel as an inner annular opening;

a loopback module, configured to loop back the tunnel-encapsulated packet at the loopback interface in the following manner: sending the message encapsulated by the tunnel out of the inner ring opening and receiving the message back from the inner ring opening again;

in one embodiment, the apparatus further comprises a configuration module;

the configuration module is used for establishing a first outer ring opening and a second outer ring opening and directly connecting the first outer ring opening and the second outer ring opening; adding the first outer ring interface to a first virtual route forwarding instance VRF1, and adding the second outer ring interface to a second virtual route forwarding instance VRF 2; recording the statically configured or dynamically learned ECMP routes in a routing table within VRF2, and importing the ECMP routes within VRF2 into the VRF 1;

the tunnel encapsulation module is used for setting the exit of the tunnel as a loop back port by adopting the following mode: setting an outlet of the tunnel as a first outer annular opening;

a loopback module, configured to loop back the tunnel-encapsulated packet at the loopback interface in the following manner: and sending the message subjected to tunnel encapsulation out at the first outer ring opening and receiving the message back from the second outer ring opening.

In an embodiment, the tunnel encapsulation module is configured to tunnel encapsulate the packet by using the following method:

The following describes, by way of some examples, a technical solution of the present application based on tunneling data.

Example 1

The present example provides a method for implementing data transmission based on a tunnel in an ECMP scenario in an internal loopback manner. And an outlet of the appointed tunnel in the tunnel encapsulation module is an inner ring port, the message is sent to the inner ring port after encapsulating tunnel information in the tunnel encapsulation module, and is looped back to enter the forwarding module after reaching the inner ring port, ECMP route searching is carried out in the forwarding module, and finally the message is forwarded out from the forwarding ports corresponding to a plurality of next hops of the ECMP route.

As shown in fig. 4, the method for transmitting data based on a tunnel of the present example may include the following steps:

step S401, an inner ring port of the exchange equipment is designated globally;

selecting a certain port on the switching equipment as an inner ring port; the message sent out from the inner ring opening can be received back from the inner ring opening; and meanwhile, configuring the MAC address offset of the inner ring port, because the next hop of the tunnel outlet is the loop port of the equipment, if the MAC address offset is not configured, the source MAC and the destination MAC of the message packaged by the tunnel packaging module are consistent, and the message is discarded by the switching chip. Considering the requirements of bandwidth and reliability, smartgroup can be set to realize multi-port link binding, thereby meeting the forwarding requirement of high bandwidth flow;

step S402, the forwarding module learns ECMP routing according to the dynamic routing protocol;

step S403, the tunnel encapsulation module performs tunnel encapsulation on the message, and sets the exit of the tunnel as an inner ring mouth;

step S404, after the message is sent to the inner ring port, the message is received back from the inner ring port through loopback;

step S405, the forwarding module queries the ECMP route to obtain a plurality of next-hop IP addresses for the message received from the inner ring interface, and forwards the message from a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next-hop IP addresses.

Example 2

The present example provides a method for implementing data transmission based on a tunnel in an ECMP scenario in an external loopback manner. Two VRFs (Virtual Routing Forwarding, Virtual Forwarding routes) are set, namely VRF1 and VRF2, then two external ports are selected to belong to the two VRFs respectively, and then routes of VRF1 and VRF2 are enabled to conduct with each other.

As shown in fig. 5, the method for transmitting data based on a tunnel of the present example may include the following steps:

step S501, two outer ring ports (a first outer ring port and a second outer ring port) of the switching equipment are designated, the outer parts of the two outer ring ports are directly connected, two VRFs (VRF1 and VRF2) are configured, the first outer ring port is added into VRF1, and the second outer ring port is added into VRF 2;

step S502, learning ECMP route in VRF2, importing route of VRF2 into VRF 1;

step S503, the tunnel encapsulation module performs tunnel encapsulation on the message, and sets an outlet of the tunnel as a first outer ring opening;

step S504, after the message is sent to the first outer ring opening, the message is sent out from the first outer ring opening and received back from the second outer ring opening;

step S505, the forwarding module queries the ECMP route to obtain a plurality of next-hop IP addresses from the message received from the second outer ring, and forwards the message from a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next-hop IP addresses.

Example 3

This example provides a method for implementing data transmission based on a vxlan tunnel in an outer loop manner, which may include the following steps:

step 1: vrf2, ECMP routing is configured or learned, the first outer ring port is added with vrf1, the second outer ring port is added with vrf2, and the first outer ring port and the second outer ring port are directly connected;

wherein the ECMP route points to a plurality of next hop exits;

the first outer ring port and the second outer ring port can select a high-bandwidth physical port, or link binding of multiple ports is realized through smartgroup, so that the forwarding requirement of high-bandwidth flow is met;

step 2: vrf1 and vrf 2;

and step 3: vrf1, MAC address offset of the three-layer interface corresponding to the first outer ring is configured, so as to avoid the SMAC (source MAC) and DMAC (destination MAC) of the encapsulated message being equal.

And 4, step 4: when the tunnel encapsulation module receives a dynamic protocol or static configuration and issues a VXLAN tunnel, the tunnel encapsulation module appoints an output port of the tunnel according to routing information in vrf1, the output port is a first outer ring port, thus, after the encapsulation processing of the tunnel encapsulation module, a message is sent to the first outer ring port, and the source MAC of the message is an address after the MAC offset is set;

step 5, the message is sent out from the first outer ring port and received back from the second outer ring port, the forwarding module performs message feature matching in vrf2, queries the ECMP route to obtain a plurality of next-hop IP addresses, and forwards the message from a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next-hop IP addresses;

in this example, the packet is shared from different ports by three-layer forwarding, which can achieve the forwarding performance of multiple tunnels in the Overlay network, and actually only one tunnel (the tunnel exit is an outer ring) in the Overlay network needs to be established. In this example, the creation of a vxlan tunnel in an ECMP scenario is shown in fig. 6.

In other embodiments, the method for implementing data transmission of other tunnel protocols by using the outer loop is similar to that in this example, except that the encapsulation rule adopted when the tunnel encapsulation module encapsulates the packet is different, for example, for data transmission of the MPLS protocol, the tunnel encapsulation module encapsulates the tunnel header based on the MPLS protocol, and the loopback processing and ECMP route forwarding are the same as those in this example.

Example 4

This example provides a method for implementing data transmission based on a vxlan tunnel in an inner-loop manner, which may include the following steps:

step 1: globally appointing an inner ring opening;

wherein, a high-bandwidth physical port or a high-bandwidth and high-reliability smartdrop group can be selected as an internal loopback port. In the example, a smartgroup is selected as an internal loop back, the smartgroup is configured firstly, ports are added into the smartgroup respectively, and then the smartgroup is enabled to be in an internal loop mode;

step 2: configuring a routing interface on the smartgroup to enable a three-layer forwarding function of the smartgroup;

the message is sent to the inner ring port after being encapsulated by the tunnel encapsulation module, and the looped message needs to be forwarded by searching the ECMP route in the forwarding module, so that the smartgroup is required to enable a three-layer function.

And step 3: the forwarding module learns ECMP routes according to a dynamic routing protocol.

And 4, step 4: when the tunnel encapsulation module receives the dynamic protocol or the static configuration and issues the tunnel, the exit of the tunnel is set as an inner ring opening, so that after the tunnel encapsulation module encapsulates and processes the message, the message is sent to the inner ring opening, and the source MAC of the message is the address after the MAC offset is set;

step 5, the message is sent out from the inner ring port and then received back from the inner ring port, the forwarding module queries the ECMP route to obtain a plurality of next-hop IP addresses, and the message is forwarded out from a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next-hop IP addresses;

in this example, the packet is shared from different ports by three-layer forwarding, which can achieve the forwarding performance of multiple tunnels in the Overlay network, and actually only one tunnel (the tunnel exit is an inner ring) in the Overlay network needs to be established.

In other embodiments, the method for implementing data transmission of other tunnel protocols by using the inner-loop manner is similar to that in this example, except that the encapsulation rule adopted when the tunnel encapsulation module encapsulates the packet is different, for example, for data transmission of the MPLS protocol, the tunnel encapsulation module encapsulates the tunnel header based on the MPLS protocol, and the loop-back processing and ECMP route forwarding are the same as those in this example.

It should be noted that the present invention can be embodied in other specific forms, and various changes and modifications can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

Claims

1. A method of tunneling data, comprising:

in a basic network, looping back a message packaged by a tunnel at a loop back port, searching an equivalent multi-path routing protocol (ECMP) routing table according to a target IP address of the message packaged by the tunnel to obtain a plurality of next hop IP addresses, and forwarding the message packaged by the tunnel through a plurality of forwarding ports corresponding to the plurality of next hop IP addresses;

the method further comprises the following steps:

establishing an inner ring port, and configuring Media Access Control (MAC) address offset for the inner ring port; the MAC address offset is used for enabling a source MAC address and a destination MAC address of a message sent by the inner ring port to be different.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

and sending the message encapsulated by the tunnel out at the inner ring port and receiving the message back from the inner ring port again.

3. The method of claim 1, prior to setting the exit of the tunnel as a loopback port, the method further comprising:

establishing a first outer ring opening and a second outer ring opening, and directly connecting the first outer ring opening with the second outer ring opening;

adding the first outer ring interface to a first virtual route forwarding instance VRF1, and adding the second outer ring interface to a second virtual route forwarding instance VRF 2;

recording the statically configured or dynamically learned ECMP routes in a routing table within VRF2, and importing the ECMP routes within VRF2 into the VRF 1; configuring a Media Access Control (MAC) address offset for the first outer ring port; the MAC address offset is used for enabling a source MAC address and a destination MAC address of a message sent out by the first outer ring port to be different.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein:

the export of tunnel sets up to the loopback mouth, includes: setting an outlet of the tunnel as a first outer annular opening;

and sending the message subjected to tunnel encapsulation out at the first outer ring opening and receiving the message back from the second outer ring opening.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the tunnel encapsulation of the message includes:

wherein, the service characteristics of the message include: the destination IP address and/or destination MAC address of the message.

6. An apparatus for tunneling data, comprising:

a route forwarding module, configured to search an equivalent multi-path routing protocol ECMP routing table according to a destination IP address of the tunnel-encapsulated packet in a base network to obtain multiple next-hop IP addresses, and forward the tunnel-encapsulated packet through multiple forwarding ports corresponding to the multiple next-hop IP addresses;

the configuration module is used for establishing an inner ring interface and configuring Media Access Control (MAC) address offset for the inner ring interface; the MAC address offset is used for enabling a source MAC address and a destination MAC address of a message sent out by the inner ring port to be different.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein:

a loopback module, configured to loop back the tunnel-encapsulated packet at the loopback interface in the following manner: and sending the message encapsulated by the tunnel out at the inner ring port and receiving the message back from the inner ring port again.

8. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the apparatus further comprises:

the configuration module is used for establishing a first outer ring opening and a second outer ring opening and directly connecting the first outer ring opening and the second outer ring opening; adding the first outer ring interface into a first virtual routing forwarding instance VRF1, and adding the second outer ring interface into a second virtual routing forwarding instance VRF 2; the statically configured or dynamically learned ECMP routes are recorded in a routing table within VRF2 and the ECMP routes within VRF2 are imported into the VRF 1.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein:

the tunnel encapsulation module is used for setting the exit of the tunnel as a loop back port in the following mode: setting an outlet of the tunnel as a first outer annular opening;

10. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein:

the tunnel encapsulation module is used for tunnel encapsulation of the message in the following modes: performing tunnel encapsulation corresponding to encapsulation rules on the message according to the service characteristics of the message;