CN116647489A

CN116647489A - Network quality measurement method, device and system

Info

Publication number: CN116647489A
Application number: CN202210143176.7A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 张忠刚; 刘泉; 徐晓旸; 聂建强
Original assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Current assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Priority date: 2022-02-16
Filing date: 2022-02-16
Publication date: 2023-08-25

Abstract

The application discloses a network quality measuring method and a related device, which are used for measuring the network quality of a data center. The measuring equipment sends a first type of measuring message to the first end equipment and receives a second type of measuring message, wherein the second type of measuring message is a message which is sent back to the measuring equipment by the measuring equipment after the corresponding first type of measuring message is sent to the second end equipment by the measuring equipment through the first end equipment, and the network quality of a round trip path between the first end equipment and the second end equipment can be obtained according to the first type of measuring message and the second type of measuring message, so that the network quality of the data center can be measured in a simpler mode.

Description

Network quality measurement method, device and system

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of communications, and in particular, to a method, an apparatus, and a system for measuring network quality.

Background

With the development of networks, more and more services run in a data center, and the network scale of the data center is rapidly increased, so that the number of network elements is increased, and the probability of network element faults and failures is increased, which also puts higher demands on rapidly sensing and positioning network faults.

Therefore, a solution is needed that can rapidly measure the quality of a data center network.

Disclosure of Invention

The application provides a network quality measuring method, equipment and a system, which are used for measuring the network quality of a data center in a simpler mode. The application also provides a corresponding computer readable storage medium, a computer program product and the like.

The first aspect of the present application provides a network quality measurement method, including:

when the network quality of the data center needs to be tested, the measurement equipment generates a first type of measurement messages according to the measurement task, wherein the first type of measurement messages are the general names of the first type of measurement messages and can comprise a plurality of messages, and the number of the first type of measurement messages is set by the measurement task. The measuring device may include a manager and a dialer, or may include only a dialer, where the manager and dialer may be software programs, specifically, the manager creates or modifies a measurement task according to a user or a system instruction, and analyzes network quality, and the dialer generates a first type of measurement message according to the measurement task. When the measuring equipment does not comprise a manager, the measuring equipment can also be a switch, a router or a server capable of generating messages, the equipment where the manager is independently located is the management equipment, and the measuring equipment generates first-class measuring messages according to the measuring task sent by the management equipment; when the measuring device comprises a manager, the measuring device itself generates the measuring task and generates the first type of measuring message according to the measuring task.

The measurement task includes information of the first end device and information of the second end device, where the information may be addresses or other identifiers, the first end device and the second end device are endpoints of a network path to be measured, the first end device is a start point of the network path to be measured, the second end device is an endpoint of the network path to be measured, and specifically, the network path to be measured includes a forward path from the first end device to the second end device and a reverse path from the second end device to the first end device. The first end device may be a first hop device through which a first type of measurement message passes, or the first end device may be the measurement device itself when the measurement device does not include a manager.

The measurement task may include information of a network path to be measured, that is, a forwarding path of the first type of measurement packet is set, and when the first end device is the measurement device itself, the information of the network path may not be set, where the first type of measurement packet is forwarded according to a routing protocol.

The measurement tasks also comprise task identifiers, and the task identifiers carried by the first type of measurement messages from the same measurement task are the same.

After the measurement device generates the first type measurement message, the measurement device sends the first type measurement message to the first end device, and receives the second type measurement message. The second type of measurement message is a corresponding message sent to the measurement device by the second end device, wherein the first end device sends the first type of measurement message to the second end device after receiving the first type of measurement message. The first type of measurement message and the second type of measurement message with the same task identifier are used for detecting the network quality of a network path to be measured, when the measurement equipment comprises a manager, namely the measurement equipment analyzes the network quality, when the measurement equipment does not comprise the manager, the measurement equipment sends measurement information to the management equipment, and then the management equipment analyzes the network quality. The measurement information may be information derived from the first type of measurement message and the second type of measurement message, or may be the second type of measurement message.

In the first aspect of the application, when testing the network quality of the data center, the measuring device sends the first type of measuring message to the end point device of the network path to be detected, and receives the second type of measuring message, and the network quality of the network path between the end point devices can be measured according to the first type of measuring message and the second type of measuring message with the same task identifier, so that the network quality of the data center can be measured without deploying proxy software on each device, and the measuring scheme is simplified.

Based on the first aspect of the present application, in a first implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, when the measurement device includes only the dial tester, the measurement device receives a measurement task sent by the management device, and generates a first type of measurement message according to the measurement task.

And the measurement equipment sends the first type of measurement message to the first end equipment of the network path to be measured and then receives the corresponding second type of measurement message sent back by the second end equipment. The measurement device receives the second type measurement message and then sends the measurement information to the management device, wherein the measurement information can be the second type measurement message or the information obtained by the measurement device according to the first type measurement message and the second type measurement message, and the management device analyzes the network quality of the network path to be measured according to the measurement information.

In a first implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, a case where the measurement device includes only the dial indicator is defined, which improves the feasibility of the solution.

In a second implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, according to the first aspect of the present application or according to the first implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the first type measurement packet includes forward path information from the first end device to the second end device, where the forward path information is that the measurement device is encapsulated In the first type measurement packet by a tunnel encapsulation format, and the tunnel encapsulation format may be a generic Routing encapsulation protocol (Generic Routing Encapsulation, GRE) format, a virtual extended local area network (Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network, VXLAN) format, an internet protocol (Internet Protocol, IP) encapsulated into another IP protocol (IP In IP) format, a Segment Routing (SR) format, a Segment Routing (SRv 6) format based on a sixth version of the internet protocol (Internet Protocol version, ipv 6), and the like, which is not limited herein.

The information of the forward path is encapsulated in the first type of measurement message through the message header encapsulated by the multi-layer tunnel, after the first network equipment on the forward path receives the first type of measurement message, the tunnel encapsulation is removed from the message header of the outermost layer of the first type of measurement message, and the processed first type of measurement message is forwarded to the next hop equipment according to the message header information of the second layer. And forwarding the first type of measurement message processed by each first network device on the forward path to the measurement device, namely, the second type of measurement message.

In a second implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the measurement device encapsulates the information of the forward path in the first type of measurement packet in a tunnel encapsulation format, so that the forward path can be planned according to the measurement requirement, and the measurement scheme is more flexible and convenient. And most network devices support tunnel encapsulation as well as decapsulation, making the measurement scheme easy to implement as well.

In a third implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, based on the first implementation manner or the second implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the first measurement packet includes information of a reverse path from the second end device to the first end device, where the information of the reverse path is that the measurement device is encapsulated in the first measurement packet by a tunnel encapsulation format, and the tunnel encapsulation format may be a format such as GRE, VXLAN, IP in IP, SR, SRv6, etc., and is not limited herein. And after the second network equipment on the reverse path receives the first type of measurement message, the tunnel encapsulation is removed from the outermost layer message header of the first type of measurement message processed by the first network equipment, and the processed first type of measurement message is forwarded to the next hop equipment according to the message header information of the second layer. After being processed by each first network device on the forward path, the first type measurement message processed by each second network device on the reverse path is forwarded to the measurement device, namely the second type measurement message. It will be appreciated that the forward path may be the same path as the reverse path, or may be a different path.

In a third implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the measurement device encapsulates the information of the reverse path in the first type of measurement packet, so that the reverse path can be planned according to the measurement requirement, and the measurement scheme is more flexible.

In a fourth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the second end device is sometimes a device that cannot release the tunnel encapsulation format packet, for example, some servers cannot release the tunnel encapsulation, but most switches and routers may be used. In this case, the IP header in the first type of measurement packet uses the internet control packet protocol (Internet Control Message Protocol, ICMP), and the ICMP data field (data) of the first type of measurement packet includes reverse path information, where the reverse path information is represented by the multi-layer tunnel header. The first type of measurement message also comprises a destination IP address and a source IP address, wherein the destination IP address is the address of the second end device, and the source IP address is the address of the measurement device. According to the internet control message protocol RFC 792, after receiving a first type of measurement message whose IP header includes an ICMP protocol type, a device (i.e., a second end device) of a destination IP address places ICMP data fields of the first type of measurement message into ICMP response messages and then forwards the ICMP response messages back to a device (i.e., a measurement device) of a source IP address according to a routing protocol, where each first type of measurement message corresponds to an ICMP response message.

After the second terminal device sends the ICMP response message to the connected target switch, a processing unit in the target switch extracts data in the ICMP response message, and the processing unit may be a central processing unit CPU or a chip. The processing unit generates a new target message according to the data, the target message comprises information of a reverse path encapsulated in a tunnel encapsulation format, the target switch releases tunnel encapsulation of the tunnel message header at the outermost layer of the target message, and forwards the target message to the next hop device according to the IP address in the message header at the second layer, namely, the third network device on the reverse path releases tunnel encapsulation on the target message continuously, and forwards the processed target message. It should be noted that the third network device includes the target switch, but does not include the second end device. And forwarding the first type measurement message processed by each first network device on the forward path to the measurement device by each third network device on the reverse path to obtain a second type measurement message.

In a fourth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, when the second end device cannot remove the tunnel encapsulation, the second end device uses the ICMP protocol to make the ICMP data field of the first type measurement packet be placed in the ICMP response packet and sent to the connected target switch, and then the target switch generates the target packet according to the ICMP data field of the ICMP response packet, and then removes the tunnel encapsulation from the target packet, thereby implementing reverse path setting and expanding application scenarios of the measurement scheme.

In a fifth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, based on the first aspect of the present application and any one of the first to fourth implementation manners of the first aspect of the present application, if the measurement device includes a manager, the measurement device obtains the number of the first type of measurement messages and the number of the second type of measurement messages with the same task identifier, and calculates a packet loss rate according to the number of the first type of measurement messages and the number of the second type of measurement messages; if the measurement device does not include a manager, after determining the number of the first type of measurement messages and the number of the second type of measurement messages with the same task identifier, the measurement device sends the number of the first type of measurement messages and the number of the second type of measurement messages to the management device, and the management device calculates a packet loss rate, where the packet loss rate can be used to calculate a packet loss rate of a network path to be measured. It can be understood that the second type of measurement message may be sent to the management device when the measurement device does not include the manager, and the management device determines the number of the first type of measurement messages and the number of the second type of measurement messages with the same task identifier and calculates the packet loss rate.

Optionally, the packet loss rate of different periods of the same measurement task can be measured by carrying a message sequence number in the first measurement message. For example, the messages of the message sequence numbers 1 to 10 are the first measurement period, the messages of the message sequence numbers 11 to 20 are the second measurement period, and the number of the first type measurement messages and the number of the second type measurement messages with the same task identification and the sequence numbers 1 to 10 are calculated, so that the packet loss rate of the first measurement period can be obtained. Or the message serial numbers of the first type of measurement messages in the same measurement period are the same, for example, the message serial numbers of the first type of measurement messages in the first measurement period are all 1, the message serial numbers of the second type of measurement messages in the second measurement period are all 2, and the number of the first type of measurement messages and the number of the second type of measurement messages with the same task identification and the same message serial numbers are calculated, so that the packet loss rate of the measurement period can be obtained.

In a fifth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, a packet loss rate may be obtained by using the number of the first type measurement packet and the second type measurement packet with the same task identifier, where the packet loss rate may be used to calculate a packet loss rate of a network path to be measured. In addition, packet loss rates in different periods can be calculated through the message sequence numbers, so that the measurement scheme is more accurate.

In a sixth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, based on any one of the first implementation manner to the fourth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the measurement device marks a transmission timestamp in data of the first type measurement message when transmitting the first type measurement message, marks a reception timestamp in data of the second type measurement message when receiving the corresponding second type measurement message, so that there is a transmission timestamp and a reception timestamp in the second type measurement message, a time delay of each second type measurement message can be obtained through the reception timestamp and the transmission timestamp of each second type measurement message, and a time delay of a network path to be measured can be calculated according to the time delay of each second type measurement message with the same task identifier. If the measuring device comprises a manager, calculating a time delay by the measuring device; if the measuring equipment does not comprise the manager, the measuring equipment sends the timestamp information in the second type of measuring message to the managing equipment, or the measuring equipment directly sends the second type of measuring message to the managing equipment, and the managing equipment calculates the time delay of the network path to be measured.

Optionally, the first type of measurement message may also carry a message sequence number to measure the time delays of different periods of the same measurement task. For example, the messages of the message sequence numbers 1 to 10 are the first measurement period, the messages of the message sequence numbers 11 to 20 are the second measurement period, and the time stamp information of the second type of measurement messages with the same task identification and the sequence numbers 1 to 10 is calculated, so that the time delay of the first measurement period can be obtained. Or the message serial numbers of the same measurement period are the same, for example, the message serial numbers of the first type of measurement messages in the first measurement period are all 1, the message serial numbers of the second type of measurement messages in the second measurement period are all 2, and the time stamp information of the second type of measurement messages with the same task identification and the same message serial number is calculated, so that the time delay of the measurement period can be obtained.

In a sixth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the time delay of each second type measurement packet with the same task identifier may be obtained by using the sending time stamp and the receiving time stamp of the second type measurement packet, and the time delay of each second type measurement packet with the same task identifier may be used to calculate the time delay of the network path to be measured. In addition, the time delays of different periods can be calculated through the message sequence numbers, so that the measurement scheme is more accurate.

In a seventh implementation form of the first aspect of the application, the first type of measurement message further comprises information of a reference path from the measurement device to the first end device and from the first end device to the measurement device, based on the first aspect of the application as such. After receiving the first type measurement message, the fourth network device on the reference path forwards the processed first type measurement message to the next hop device according to the information of the reference path. And the first type measurement message processed by each fourth network device on the reference path is forwarded to the measurement device and then is the second type measurement message. The path from the measuring device to the first end device may be the same as or different from the path from the first end device to the measuring device. It will be appreciated that when the measurement device is the first end device, there is no reference path.

The network quality of the network path to be measured can be obtained by combining the network quality of the reference path, specifically, the total time delay of the reference path and the network path to be measured can be obtained by calculating the time delay of each second type of measurement message with the same task identifier, and the time delay of the network path to be measured can be obtained by subtracting the time delay of the reference path from the total time delay. The total packet loss rate of the reference path and the network path to be measured can be obtained through the number of the first type measurement messages and the number of the second type measurement messages with the same task identification, and the total packet loss rate subtracted by the reference path is the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured. It can be understood that the packet loss rate and the time delay of the reference path can be obtained by additionally sending a measurement message by the measurement device and receiving the measurement message, and the method is described in the fifth implementation manner and the sixth implementation manner of the present application, and details thereof are not repeated here.

In a seventh implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the first type measurement packet further includes information of a reference path, and network quality of a network path to be measured can be obtained by combining network quality of the reference path, so that the scheme is more accurate.

According to a seventh implementation form of the first aspect of the application, in an eighth implementation form of the first aspect of the application. The manager may set a condition that the reference path has a fault, for example, if a packet loss occurs or if a packet loss rate is greater than a certain value or a delay is greater, the fault is considered to exist. In order to avoid that the reference path has a larger fault and the measurement result of the network path to be measured has a larger influence, the measurement equipment determines that the reference path has no fault before generating the first type of measurement message.

Specifically, if the measurement equipment comprises a manager, the measurement equipment replaces information of a reference path in the measurement task, and a first type of measurement message is generated according to the updated measurement task; if the measuring equipment does not comprise the manager, the management equipment replaces the information of the reference path in the measuring task, and the measuring equipment generates a first type of measuring message according to the updated measuring task.

In an eighth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, the measurement device determines that the reference path included in the first type of measurement packet has no fault, so that the network quality obtained according to the first type of measurement packet and the second type of measurement packet is closer to the network quality of the network path to be measured, and the calculation result is more accurate. When packet loss occurs, namely the reference path is considered to have a fault, after the reference path is determined to have no fault, the packet loss rate obtained according to the first type of measurement message and the second type of measurement message is the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured, so that the step of calculating the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured is simplified.

According to the first aspect of the present application and any one of the first to eighth implementation forms of the first aspect of the present application, in a ninth implementation form of the first aspect of the present application, if a network path to be measured is found to have a fault, for example, a packet loss or a larger time delay, the measurement device determines a fault location by sending a third type of measurement message. Specifically, the third type of measurement packet includes information of two end point devices of the target path, where one end point is a first end point device in the measurement task, the other end point is an intermediate device on the network path to be measured in the measurement task, the intermediate device is any device on the network path to be measured except for the first end point device, and a forward path and a reverse path between the two end points in the third type of measurement packet are the same. The measuring device can obtain the network quality of the target path through the third type of measuring messages, namely the network quality from the first end device to the intermediate device on the network path to be measured, and can obtain the network quality from the first end device to the different intermediate devices by sending the third type of measuring messages with different end point information, namely the third type of measuring messages with different information of the intermediate device, so that the specific fault position can be determined. It should be noted that, specific fault positions may be obtained by testing one by one according to the sequence of the devices on the network path to be measured, or critical devices or devices which are prone to fault may be selected as intermediate devices on the network path to be measured, so that the fault positions may be determined quickly.

In a ninth implementation manner of the first aspect of the present application, by sending a plurality of third type measurement packets with different endpoints, it may be determined which two devices and a link between the two devices have a fault, but in the prior art, only which two servers have a fault, and it cannot be determined which link between the servers has a fault, thereby improving accuracy of a measurement scheme.

A second aspect of the application provides a measurement device comprising:

the generating unit is used for generating a first type of measurement message, wherein the first type of measurement message comprises information of first end equipment, information of second end equipment and task identification, and the first end equipment and the second end equipment are endpoints of a network path to be measured; the network path includes a forward path from the first end device to the second end device and a reverse path from the second end device to the first end device;

the sending unit is used for sending the first type of measurement message;

the receiving unit is used for receiving second-type measurement messages, wherein the second-type measurement messages are corresponding messages sent back to the measuring equipment by the second end equipment after the first-type measurement messages reach the second end equipment from the measuring equipment through the first end equipment; the first type of measurement message with the task identifier and the second type of measurement message are used for measuring the network quality of the network path.

Based on the second aspect of the present application, in a first implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, the receiving unit is further configured to receive a measurement task sent by the management device, where the measurement task is used to generate a first type of measurement packet;

the sending unit is further configured to send measurement information to the management device according to the first type measurement packet and the second type measurement packet, where the measurement information is used for the management device to measure network quality of the network path.

In a second implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, the first type measurement packet includes forward path information, where the forward path information is used to indicate the first network device on the forward path to send the first type measurement packet after being processed by the first network device to the next hop device.

In a third implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, based on the second aspect of the present application, the first type measurement packet includes reverse path information, where the reverse path information is used to instruct the second network device on the reverse path to send the first type measurement packet after being processed by the second network device to the next hop device.

In a fourth implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, based on the second aspect of the present application, the second end device is a device that cannot release the tunnel encapsulation format packet, the second end device is connected to the target switch, the data carried by the first type of measurement packet is ICMP format data, the ICMP format data includes reverse path information encapsulated in the tunnel encapsulation format, and after the ICMP format data is sent to the target switch by the second end device, the ICMP format data is used for the target switch to generate the target packet; the target message comprises reverse path information packaged in a tunnel packaging format, wherein the reverse path information is used for indicating a third network device on the reverse path to send the target message processed by the third network device to next hop equipment.

In a fifth implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, based on the second aspect of the present application, and based on any one of the first implementation manner to the fourth implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, the measurement device further includes: the acquisition unit is used for acquiring a first quantity of transmitted first-class measurement messages containing task identifiers and a second quantity of received second-class measurement messages containing the same task identifiers, wherein the first quantity and the second quantity are used for determining the packet loss rate of the network path.

In a sixth implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, based on the second aspect of the present application and any one of the first implementation manner to the fourth implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, the second type of measurement packet includes a first timestamp and a second timestamp, the first timestamp is marked when the measurement device sends the first type of measurement packet, the second timestamp is marked when the measurement device receives the second type of measurement packet, and the first timestamp and the second timestamp are used to determine a delay of the network path.

In a seventh implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, based on the second aspect of the present application and any one of the first implementation manner to the sixth implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, the first type measurement packet includes information of a reference path from the measurement device to the first end device and from the first end device to the measurement device, where the information of the reference path is used to instruct a fourth network device on the reference path to send the first type measurement packet after being processed by the fourth network device to a next hop device; the network quality of the reference path is used to analyze the network quality of the network path.

According to a seventh implementation form of the second aspect of the application, in an eighth implementation form of the second aspect of the application, the measurement device further comprises: and the determining unit is used for determining that the reference path has no fault.

In a ninth implementation manner of the second aspect of the present application, based on the second aspect of the present application and any one of the first to eighth implementation manners of the second aspect of the present application, the generating unit is further configured to generate a third type of measurement packet, where information of one endpoint in the third type of measurement packet is information of the first end device, information of another endpoint in the third type of measurement packet is information of an intermediate device on the network path, and the intermediate device is any device on the network path except for the first end device;

the sending unit is further configured to send a third type of measurement packet, where the third type of measurement packet is used to determine a failure location of the network path.

The measuring device provided in the second aspect of the present application is configured to perform the method described in the first aspect and any implementation manner of the first aspect.

A third aspect of the application provides a measurement device comprising:

the device comprises a central processing unit, a memory, an input/output interface, a wired or wireless network interface and a power supply;

the memory is a short-term memory or a persistent memory;

the central processor is configured to communicate with the memory and execute instructions in the memory to perform the method of the first aspect and any implementation of the first aspect.

A fourth aspect of the present application provides a network quality measurement system, comprising:

the management device is configured to perform the method described in the first aspect and any implementation manner of the first aspect, and the measurement device is configured to trigger the measurement device to perform the method described in the first aspect and any implementation manner of the first aspect.

A fifth aspect of the application provides a computer readable storage medium comprising instructions which, when run on a computer, cause the computer to perform the method of the first aspect and any implementation of the first aspect.

A sixth aspect of the application provides a computer program product comprising instructions which, when run on a computer, cause the computer to perform the method of the first aspect and any implementation of the first aspect.

A seventh aspect of the present application provides a chip system comprising at least one processor and a communication interface, the communication interface and the at least one processor being interconnected by a wire, the at least one processor being adapted to run a computer program or instructions to perform the method of the first aspect and any implementation of the first aspect.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a data center network architecture in an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an embodiment of a network quality measurement method according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a network quality measurement method according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of another embodiment of a network quality measurement method according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating a message format of a first type of measurement message according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of a GRE header format according to an embodiment of the application;

fig. 7 is a schematic diagram of an IP message header field format according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a format of a measurement message data field according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 9 is a diagram of another embodiment of a network quality measurement method according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 10 is a diagram of another embodiment of a network quality measurement method according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 11 is another schematic diagram of an IP message header field format according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 12 is another diagram of a measurement message data field format according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 13 is a diagram illustrating another embodiment of a network quality measurement method according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 14 is a diagram of another embodiment of a network quality measurement method according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 15 is a schematic view of an embodiment of a measuring apparatus according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 16 is a schematic view of another embodiment of a measuring device according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 17 is a schematic view of another embodiment of the measuring apparatus in the embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

Embodiments of the present application will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which it is evident that the embodiments described are only some, but not all embodiments of the present application. As one of ordinary skill in the art can know, with the development of technology and the appearance of new scenes, the technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the application is also applicable to similar technical problems.

The terms first, second and the like in the description and in the claims and in the above-described figures, are used for distinguishing between similar elements and not necessarily for describing a particular sequential or chronological order. It is to be understood that the data so used may be interchanged where appropriate such that the embodiments described herein may be implemented in other sequences than those illustrated or otherwise described herein. Furthermore, the terms "comprises," "comprising," and "having," and any variations thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, system, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of steps or elements is not necessarily limited to those steps or elements expressly listed but may include other steps or elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus.

The embodiment of the application provides a network quality measuring method device and a system, which are used for measuring the network quality of a data center in a simpler mode. The application also provides a corresponding computer readable storage medium, a computer program product and the like. The following is a detailed description.

The embodiment of the application is applied to a data center network, and fig. 1 is a system architecture of the data center network in the embodiment of the application.

The data center includes an access device 101, a core device 102, and a relay device 103, where the access device 101 is connected to the relay device 103 through the core device 102, and the access device 101 is typically connected to a terminal device, such as a server, as an interface. Generally, the number of core devices 102 is small, and the number of access devices 101 and relay devices 103 is large. The number of core devices 102 may be increased when bandwidth is insufficient and the number of access devices 101 may be increased when the interface is insufficient.

In the scenario of the embodiment of the present application, the access device 101 may be a top of rack (TOR), the core device 102 may be a backbone switch (spine), and the relay device 103 may be a border leaf switch (BL) or a data center interconnect switch (data center interconnection leaf, DCI leaf).

Because the data center has a plurality of devices and links, the problems of device faults, device failures, network congestion and the like can occur, so that the network faults cause packet loss or larger time delay, and the network quality is influenced.

Aiming at the defects, based on the system architecture of the data center shown in fig. 1, the embodiment of the application provides a network quality measurement method and measurement equipment, which can measure the network quality between any two devices of the data center. The following is described in connection with fig. 2:

the measurement device 201 generates a first type of measurement message, where the first type of measurement message includes information of the first end device 202, information of the second end device 203, and a task identifier. It should be noted that there may be many intermediate devices between the measuring device 201 and the first end device 202, between the first end device 202 and the second end device 203, and between the second end device 203 and the measuring device 201, which are not limited herein.

The measurement device 201 sends a first type of measurement message to the first end device 202, and receives a corresponding second type of measurement message, where the second type of measurement message is a message sent by the second end device 203 after the first end device 202 receives the first type of measurement message and sends the processed first type of measurement message to the second end device 203. The network quality of the network path between the first end device 202 and the second end device 203 can be obtained according to the first type of measurement message and the second type of measurement message with the same task identity, specifically, the network path between the first end device 202 and the second end device 203 includes a forward path from the first end device 202 to the second end device 203 and a reverse path from the second end device 203 to the first end device 202.

Based on the data center system architecture shown in fig. 1, the method described in fig. 2 is described in detail below in conjunction with fig. 3:

the measurement device 301 creates a measurement task and generates a corresponding first type of measurement message, where the measurement task sets a format of the message, a forwarding path of the message, the number of the messages, carried data, and the like. The measurement device 301 sends a first type of measurement message to the device to be measured (i.e., the first end device 3023), where the first measurement message is transmitted on a forward path between the first end device 3023 and the second end device 3026, and then is transmitted back on a reverse path, where the measurement device receives a returned message, i.e., a second type of measurement message. In the process of sending the first type of measurement message and receiving the second type of measurement message by the measurement device 301, the forwarding path of the message may be as shown by the solid line in fig. 3. The first type measurement message reaches the access device 3022, is forwarded to the first end device 3023 via the core device 3031, and the first end device 3023 receives the first type measurement message and then sends the first type measurement message to the second end device 3026 via the core device 3032 and the intermediate device 3043. The second end device 3026 receives the first type measurement message and transmits the first type measurement message to the measurement device 301 through the core device 3032, the transit device 3043, the first end device 3023, the core device 3031, and the access device 3022. Each hop device on the forwarding path processes the first type of measurement message, and the first type of measurement message processed by each hop device is sent to the measurement device 301 to be the second type of measurement message.

It should be noted that, the forwarding paths shown in fig. 3 are only examples, in the forwarding paths in fig. 3, the forward paths from the measurement device 301 to the second end device 3026 are the same as the reverse paths from the second end device 3026 to the measurement device 301, and in practical applications, there are often cases where the forward paths are different from the reverse paths, for example, a packet sent by the second end device 3026 sequentially passes through the core device 3032, the transit device 3042, and the core device 3031 to reach the first end device 3023, and then sequentially passes through the core device 3031 and the access device 3021 to reach the measurement device 301. However, since the network quality between the first end device 3023 and the second end device 3026 needs to be measured, the first end device needs to be included in both the forward path and the reverse path of the measuring device 301 and the second end device 3026, that is, the message needs to be forwarded through the first end device.

The data carried by the first type of measurement message set by the measurement task includes a task identifier, the first type of measurement message generated according to the same measurement task has the same task identifier, the second type of measurement message which is sent back to the measurement device 301 after being processed by each hop device on the forwarding path of the first type of measurement message also has the same task identifier, and the measurement device 301 can obtain the packet loss rate of the forwarding path (i.e., the round trip path, including the forward path and the reverse path) from the measurement device 301 to the second end device 3026 according to the number of the first type of measurement message and the second type of measurement message with the same task identifier. For example, when the measurement device 301 sends 100 measurement messages of the first type with the task identifier 1 and receives 90 measurement messages of the second type with the task identifier 1, the packet loss number is 10, and the packet loss ratio is the packet loss number divided by the number of the sent messages and 10/100 is equal to 10%.

The measurement device 301 marks a transmission time stamp in the message when transmitting the first type of measurement message, marks a reception time stamp in the message when receiving the second type of measurement message, the measurement device 301 can calculate the round trip time RTT of each second type of measurement message according to the transmission time stamp and the reception time stamp information in the second type of measurement message, and can obtain the RTT of the forwarding path from the measurement device 301 to the second end device 3026 according to the RTT of each second type of measurement message with the same task identifier. Specifically, the RTT of each second type measurement packet is obtained by subtracting the sending timestamp from the receiving timestamp of the second type measurement packet, and the average value of RTTs of all second type measurement packets with the same task identifier is calculated to obtain the RTT of the forwarding path from the measurement device 301 to the second end device 3026. For example, if the transmission time stamp of a second type measurement message is 2022, 1, 10 minutes, 20 milliseconds, and the reception time stamp is 2022, 1, 10 minutes, 10 seconds, 30 milliseconds, then the RTT of the second type measurement message is 10 milliseconds; if there are 5 second-class measurement packets with the same task identifier, and the RTTs are 1 ms, 2 ms, 3 ms, 4 ms, and 5 ms, respectively, then the RTT of the forwarding path from the measurement device 301 to the second end device 3026 is (1+2+3+4+5)/5, which is equal to 3 ms. It should be noted that, the above-mentioned calculation of the average value of RTTs of all the second type measurement messages with the same task identifier to obtain the RTT of the forwarding path is merely an example, and the RTT of the forwarding path may actually be calculated by other methods, for example, the median of RTTs of all the second type measurement messages with the same task identifier is selected as the RTT of the forwarding path, or the maximum value of RTTs of all the second type measurement messages with the same task identifier is selected as the RTT of the forwarding path, which is not limited herein.

The measurement task also sets the path of the message in the forwarding path from the measurement device 301 to the first end device 3023 and the path from the first end device 3023 to the measurement device 301 as a reference path, where the reference path is shown by a dotted line in fig. 3. The measurement device 301 may additionally generate a measurement packet to measure the network quality of a reference path, which is a forwarding path of the measurement packet that is additionally generated. The measurement device 301 may calculate the packet loss rate and the time delay of the reference path according to the sending of the measurement message that is generated in addition and the receiving of the corresponding sent measurement message, and the calculation method is the same as the calculation method of the packet loss rate and the time delay of the forwarding path between the measurement device 301 and the second end device 3026, which is not described herein.

The measurement device 301 combines the network quality of the forwarding path and the reference path to obtain the network quality of the network path to be measured between the first end device 3023 and the second end device 3026, specifically, the delay of the forwarding path minus the delay of the reference path is the delay of the network path to be measured, and the packet loss rate of the forwarding path minus the packet loss rate of the reference path is the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured. For example, the RTT of the forwarding path is 3 ms, the RTT of the reference path is 1 ms, and the RTT of the network path to be measured is 3 minus 2 and is equal to 1 ms; the packet loss rate of the forwarding path is 10%, the packet loss rate of the reference path is 5%, and the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured is 10% minus 5% and is equal to 5%. Note that the network path to be measured includes a round trip path between the first end apparatus 3023 and the second end apparatus 3026, that is, a forward path from the first end apparatus 3023 to the second end apparatus 3026 and a reverse path from the second end apparatus 3026 to the first end apparatus 3023.

Optionally, before the first type of measurement packet is generated, the measurement device 301 may measure the network quality of the reference path, and if the packet loss rate or the time delay is found to be large, the measurement device 301 replaces the reference path in the measurement task to ensure that the reference path has no fault, thereby avoiding that the network quality of the reference path has a great influence on the network quality of the network path to be measured.

Optionally, the first type of measurement message also carries a message sequence number, and the packet loss rate and the time delay of different measurement periods of the same measurement task can be obtained through the task identifier and the message sequence number. For example, the message sequence numbers of the first type of measurement messages of the first measurement period of the same measurement task are all 1, 10 first type of measurement messages are sent in the first measurement period, the number of the messages with the message sequence numbers of 1 in the second type of measurement messages received is 5, the packet loss number of the forwarding path in the first measurement period is 5, the packet loss rate is 50%, the RTTs of the second type of measurement messages with the 5 message sequence numbers of 1 are respectively 1 millisecond, 2 millisecond, 3 millisecond, 4 millisecond and 5 millisecond, the RTT of the forwarding path in the first measurement period is (1+2+3+4+5)/5 and is equal to 3 millisecond, and the network quality of the first measurement period of the network path to be measured can be obtained by combining the network quality of the same measurement period of the reference path.

In addition, the message sequence numbers of the same measurement period are not necessarily the same, and may be set by the measurement task, for example, message sequence numbers 1 to 10 are the first measurement period, and message sequence numbers 11 to 20 are the second measurement period.

It is to be understood that the first end device and the second end device to be measured may be switches or routers, or may be servers connected to the switches or routers, which are not limited herein.

In the embodiment of the present application, the measurement device may carry the information of the forwarding path in the first type of measurement packet in a plurality of ways, which are described below.

1. The first type of measurement message carries reverse path information through a multi-layer GRE message header;

in this embodiment, the measurement device encapsulates the information of the forwarding path carried by the multi-layer GRE header in the first type of measurement packet, where the forwarding path includes a forward path from the measurement device to the second end device and a reverse path from the second end device to the measurement device.

Besides encapsulating the information of the forwarding path in the first type of measurement packet by using the GRE, the information may also be encapsulated by using other tunnel encapsulation formats, for example, VXLAN, IP in IP, SR, SRv6, etc., which are only described by taking the GRE as an example in the embodiment of the present application, and the specific tunnel encapsulation format is not limited.

The specific execution flow of the network quality measurement method shown in the present embodiment is exemplarily described below with reference to fig. 3 and 4.

401. The measurement device generates a measurement task.

The measurement device creates or modifies a measurement task according to an instruction issued by a user or a system, wherein the measurement task comprises an address of a first end device and an address of a second end device, the first end device and the second end device are end point devices of a network path to be measured, and the purpose of the measurement task is to measure the network quality of the network path between the first end device and the second end device, specifically, the network quality of a forward path from the first end device to the second end device and a reverse path from the second end to the first end device.

As shown in fig. 3, there are many different links between the access device, the core device and the transit device, so that many different paths exist between the first type measurement message from the measurement device to the first end device and then to the second end device, and then from the second end device to the measurement device, the measurement task plans the transit path of the first type measurement message, as shown by the solid line in fig. 3, and the device through which the first type measurement message passes can be selected as required. It should be noted that, since the network quality of the network path between the first end device and the second end device is measured, the first type of measurement packet passes through the first end device from the measurement device to the second end device and from the second end device back to the first end device.

In the forwarding paths of the first type of measurement messages of the measurement task planning, paths from the measurement equipment to the first end equipment and paths from the first end equipment to the measurement equipment are considered as reference paths, and the network quality of the reference paths is required to be combined when the subsequent measurement equipment analyzes the network quality of the network paths to be measured.

Besides setting the forwarding paths of the first type of measurement messages, the measurement tasks also comprise the number of the first type of measurement messages, task identifiers of the first type of measurement messages and the like. The measurement task also sets the format of the first type of measurement message, namely sets how the first type of measurement message carries the information of the forwarding path, the task identifier and other contents.

402. The measurement device determines that the reference path is not faulty.

In order to avoid that the reference path has a larger fault and the measurement result of the network path to be measured has a larger influence, the measurement equipment determines that the reference path has no fault before generating the first type of measurement message. It will be appreciated that the measurement device may set a condition that the reference path has a fault, for example, that a packet loss, a packet loss rate being high, or a delay being high is considered to be a fault.

Specifically, the measurement device sends a message to the first end device and receives a message sent back by the first end device, a forwarding path of the message is a reference path, the measurement device analyzes whether the reference path has a fault according to the sent message and the received message, and if the reference path has a fault, the measurement device modifies the information of the reference path in the measurement task, so that the reference path is ensured not to have the fault. The method by which the measuring device analyzes the network quality of the reference path will be described in detail in a subsequent step 409.

It will be appreciated that this is only an example, and that the measurement device may not actually modify the information of the reference path when the reference path has a fault, in which case the measurement device does not limit the time sequence of measuring the network quality of the reference path, and the measurement device may measure the network quality of the forwarding path before generating the first type of measurement packet, or may measure the network quality of the forwarding path.

403. The measurement device generates a first type of measurement message.

The measurement device generates a first type of measurement message according to the measurement task, wherein the first type of measurement message comprises path information planned by the measurement task, task identification and the like, and a message format of the first type of measurement message is described below with reference to fig. 5. The first type of measurement message includes a path control field, an IP message header field, and a measurement message data field. Specifically, the path control field is composed of multiple GRE message headers, the format of the GRE message headers is shown in fig. 6, after each first-class measurement message arrives at one-hop device, the device releases the GRE message header of the outermost layer, and forwards the remaining first-class measurement message to the next-hop device according to the IP address in the IPv4 message header in the GRE message header of the second layer. The IP address in the last GRE header in the path control field is the address of the previous hop device that the first type of measurement message after processing sent to the measurement device. Planning of the forwarding path of the first type of measurement message can be achieved through the path control field.

The IP header field is mainly used to forward the processed first type measurement message back to the measurement device, and the protocol used by the IP header in this embodiment is the user datagram protocol (User Datagram Protocol, UDP). The format of the IP header field is shown in fig. 7, where the IP header includes a destination IP address (i.e., the IP address of the measurement device), and when the processed first type measurement message arrives at the previous hop device of the measurement device, the encapsulation of all GRE headers is released, and then the message is sent to the measurement device according to the destination IP address in the IP header. Note that, in this embodiment, the IP header may use protocols such as a transmission control protocol (Transmission Control Protocol, TCP) in addition to the UDP protocol, which is not limited herein.

The data format carried by the measurement message data field is determined by the IP header, and in this embodiment, the IP header uses the UDP protocol, so the data of the measurement message data field is also the data of the UDP format. The format of the measurement message data field is shown in fig. 8, and includes a task identifier, a message sequence number, and a message timestamp. The first type of measurement messages from the same measurement task carry the same task identification. Different measurement periods can be distinguished according to the message sequence numbers, for example, the message sequence numbers of the same measurement period are the same, the message sequence numbers of the first measurement period are all 1, the message sequence numbers of the second measurement period are all 2, or the message sequence numbers 1 to 10 are set as the first measurement period, and the message sequence numbers 11 to 20 are set as the second measurement period. The message time stamp is marked when the measuring equipment sends the first type of measuring message and receives the second type of measuring message. The data carried by the data field of the measurement message is used for analyzing the network quality.

404. The measurement device sends a first type of measurement message to the first end device.

After the measurement equipment generates a first type of measurement message, the first type of measurement message is sent to the first-hop equipment, the first-hop equipment unpacks the GRE message header of the outermost layer of the first type of measurement message, and the processed first type of measurement equipment is forwarded to the next-hop equipment according to the IP address in the GRE message header of the second layer until the first-hop equipment sends the first type of measurement message to the first-end equipment. It can be understood that the first type of measurement message processed by each hop device is forwarded to the measurement device, i.e. the second type of measurement message. When the first type of measurement message is sent, the measurement device marks a sending timestamp in the first type of measurement message.

405. The first end device decapsulates the first type of measurement message.

After the first end device receives the first type of measurement message, the outermost GRE message header of the first type of measurement message after being processed is removed, and the IP address in the inner GRE message header is the IP address of the next hop device.

406. The first end device sends the processed first type measurement message to the second end device.

And the first end equipment forwards the processed first type measurement message to the next hop equipment according to the IP address in the inner layer GRE message head, and the next hop equipment forwards the processed first type measurement message until the second type measurement message is sent to the second end equipment. When the first end device sends the processed first type measurement report Wen Xiangdi to the two end devices, the path passed by the message is the forward path of the network path to be measured. It can be understood that the first type measurement message processed by each hop device on the forward path is forwarded to the measurement device, i.e. the second type measurement message.

407. The second end device decapsulates the processed first type measurement message.

After the second end device receives the processed first type measurement message, the outermost GRE message header of the processed first type measurement message is removed, and the IP address in the inner GRE message header is the IP address of the next hop device.

408. The second end device sends the processed first type measurement message to the measurement device.

Because the network quality of the network path between the first end device and the second end device needs to be measured, the message in the set forwarding path is sent to the first end device first, and then is sent to the measuring device from the first end device.

Specifically, the second end device forwards the processed first type measurement message to the next hop device according to the IP address in the inner layer GRE message header, the next hop device releases the GRE encapsulation of the message and forwards the message until the message is sent to the first end device, and in the process that the second end device sends the processed first type measurement message to the first end device, the path through which the message passes is the reverse path of the network path to be measured. And the first end equipment performs GRE (generic routing encapsulation) on the processed first-class measurement message, then forwards the first-class measurement message to the next-hop equipment according to the obtained IP address until the message is sent to the previous-hop equipment of the measurement equipment, at the moment, the GRE message head is stripped, and the previous-hop equipment sends the processed first-class measurement message to the measurement equipment according to the destination IP address in the IP message head. In the process that the second end device sends the processed first type of measurement message to the measurement device, the first type of measurement message processed by each jump device is sent to the measurement device to be the second type of measurement message. When the measuring device receives the second type of measuring message, the receiving time stamp is marked in the second type of measuring message.

409. The measuring device analyzes the network quality of the network path to be measured.

The measurement device can obtain the packet loss rate and the time delay of the network path to be measured according to the sent first type measurement message and the received second type measurement message.

The measurement equipment can obtain the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured and the reference path according to the number of the first type measurement messages and the second type measurement messages with the same task identifier; the measuring equipment can calculate the round trip time RTT of each second type of measuring message according to the sending time stamp and the receiving time stamp information in the second type of measuring message, and can obtain the RTT of the forwarding path of the first type of measuring message according to the RTT of each second type of measuring message with the same task identifier. The specific calculation method is described in the measurement method described in fig. 3, and will not be described here.

The network quality of the reference path can be obtained by sending further measurement messages and receiving corresponding returned measurement messages, the method being the same as the method for measuring the network quality of the forwarding path described above. After the network quality of the reference path is obtained, the RTT of the forwarding path minus the RTT of the reference path is the RTT of the network path to be measured, and the packet loss rate of the forwarding path minus the packet loss rate of the reference path is the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured. The specific method for calculating the forwarding path, the reference path and the network path to be measured is described in the measurement method described in fig. 3, and will not be described herein.

In addition, if the measurement device considers that the reference path has a packet loss or has a fault, after determining that the reference path has no fault in step 402, the measurement device does not have a packet loss problem in the reference path, and then the measured packet loss rate of the forwarding path is the packet loss rate of the network path to be measured.

Optionally, the measurement device may further calculate packet loss rates and time slots of different measurement periods according to the sequence number of the packet.

410. The measurement device generates a target task.

The measurement device may set a condition that a network path to be measured has a fault, for example, consider that a packet loss rate is too large or a time delay is too large, which is not limited herein. If the measuring equipment finds that the network path to be measured has faults, the measuring equipment generates a target task, and the fault position is determined through the target task. The round-trip paths between two end-point devices in the target task are the same, one end-point device (called a first end-point device) is the first end-point device in the measurement task, and the other end-point device (called a second end-point device) is any device on the network path to be measured except the first end-point device. The network quality between two end point devices in the target task, namely the network quality between the first end point device and the second end point device, can be determined through the target task, and the network quality between the first end point device and different devices on a network path to be measured can be obtained through modifying the information of the second end point device in the target task, so that the specific position of the fault is found.

411. The measuring device sends a third type of measuring message to the first end device.

And the measurement equipment generates a third type of measurement message according to the target task and sends the third type of measurement message to the first end equipment. And after the information of the second endpoint equipment in the target task is modified, the measuring equipment regenerates a corresponding third type of measuring message. The location of the fault may be determined by a third, different type of measurement message from the second endpoint device. As described below with reference to fig. 3, for example, if the second endpoint device in the third type measurement packet is the core device 3032 of the first endpoint device 3023 on the network path to be measured, the measurement device 301 may obtain the network quality of the path between the first endpoint device 3023 and the core device 3032 through the third type measurement packet; if there is no failure in the path between the first end device 3023 and the core device 3032, the second end device in the third type measurement packet is modified to be the next hop device transit device 3043 of the core device 3032, so as to determine the network quality of the path between the first end device 3023 and the transit device 3043, and since there is no failure in the path between the first end device 3023 and the core device 3032, it is possible to determine the network quality of the path between the core device 3023 and the transit device 3043. The network quality of each link in the network path to be measured can thus be determined in turn until a fault location is found.

It should be noted that, the measurement device may sequentially modify devices on the network path to be measured into the second endpoint device according to the above method, or may select some devices that are prone to failure or separate from each other to serve as the second endpoint device, for example, the second endpoint device is directly set as the transit device 3043, if the path between the first endpoint device 3023 and the transit device 3043 has no failure, it is not necessary to measure the network quality of the path between the first endpoint device 3023 and the core device 3032, and the measurement times are saved.

It can be understood that the method for the measurement device to measure the network quality according to the third type of measurement message is the same as the method for the measurement device to measure the network quality through the first type of measurement message, and will not be described herein.

In this embodiment, the network quality of the network path between the first end device and the second end device can be measured through the first type measurement message and the second type measurement message, and the network quality can be achieved only by supporting the GRE protocol by the device, and most devices with the GRE protocol as a basic protocol can support the GRE protocol, so that proxy software does not need to be deployed on each device to be measured. In addition, the measurement device can set a forwarding path of the first type of measurement message by encapsulating the multi-layer GRE message header, can perform targeted measurement on a specific path according to the requirement, and can determine which link in the network path has a fault through a target task if the network path to be measured is found to have the fault.

2. The first type of measurement message carries reverse path information through ICMP data fields:

in this embodiment, for a device that the second end device is sometimes unable to release the GRE encapsulation, for example, some servers are unable to release the GRE encapsulation, where the measurement device may encapsulate, by encapsulating the multi-layer GRE header, information of a forward path from the measurement device to the second end device in the first type measurement packet, and then carry information of a reverse path from the second end device to the measurement device in an ICMP data field of the first type measurement packet, so as to implement that the first type measurement packet carries information of the forwarding path.

The second end device that cannot release the GRE package in fig. 9 is exemplified as a server, as described below with reference to fig. 9.

In fig. 9, the solid line (2) is a forward path of the first type measurement packet forwarding path, and the measurement device 901 encapsulates the information of the forward path in the first type measurement packet through the GRE protocol. The measurement device 901 sends a first type of measurement message, each hop device on the forward path unpacks the first type of measurement message and sends the first type of measurement message to the server 905, at this time, the GRE message on the outer layer of the first type of measurement message is stripped, and the rest is an IP message header using ICMP protocol and an ICMP data field carried by the IP message header, where the ICMP data field carries information of the reverse path set by the multi-layer GRE message header. According to ICMP RFC 792, after receiving an IP header using ICMP protocol, server 905 sends an ICMP response message to source IP address, i.e. measurement device 901, and the ICMP response message is forwarded according to the routing protocol, where the forwarding path is shown by dotted line (3), and the path is not controllable, and does not necessarily pass through first end device 9023, so that the quality of the network path between first end device 9023 and server 905 cannot be measured.

Therefore, an improvement is made to the target switch 9025 connected to the server 905, and after the target switch 9025 receives the ICMP response message, the processing unit in the target switch extracts the ICMP data field in the ICMP response message, and generates a new target message according to the data field, where the target message includes a multi-layer GRE header indicating reverse path information. The target switch removes the GRE header of the outermost layer of the target message, and forwards the GRE header to the next hop device according to the IP address in the GRE header of the second layer, so as to control the reverse path of the response message sent to the measurement device 901, where the reverse path after conversion is shown as a dotted line (1).

The reverse path (1) is the same as the forward path (2) in fig. 9 by way of example only, and the reverse path (1) may be freely configured and may only pass through the first end device 9023.

A specific implementation procedure of the network quality measurement method described in fig. 9 is exemplarily described below with reference to fig. 10.

1001. The measurement device generates a measurement task.

1002. The measurement device determines that the reference path is not faulty.

Steps 1001 and 1002 in this embodiment are similar to steps 401 and 402 in the embodiment shown in fig. 4, and are not described here again.

1003. The measurement device generates a first type of measurement message.

The measurement device generates a first type of measurement message according to the measurement task, wherein the first type of measurement message comprises path information planned by the measurement task, task identification and the like, and a message format of the first type of measurement message is described below with reference to fig. 5. The first type of measurement message includes a path control field, an IP message header field, and a measurement message data field. Specifically, the path control field is composed of a plurality of GRE encapsulated message headers, the format of the GRE message headers is shown in fig. 6, the first type measurement message is subjected to GRE decapsulation by one device after reaching the device, the header of the GRE message header at the outermost layer is stripped, and the rest of the first type measurement message is forwarded to the next hop device according to the address in the IPv4 message header of the GRE message header at the second layer. In this embodiment, the IP address in the last encapsulated GRE header in the path control field is the IP address of the second end device. The forward path in the forwarding path of the first type of measurement message, that is, the path from the measurement device to the second end device, can be set through the path control field.

The IP header in this embodiment uses ICMP protocol. The format of the IP header field is shown in fig. 11, where the IP header includes an IP address of the second end device (i.e. a destination IP address) and an IP address of the measurement device (i.e. a source IP address), and the IP header field is used by the second end device to put a measurement message data field (i.e. an ICMP data field) in the first type measurement message into an ICMP response message according to the ICMP RFC 792 rule, and send the ICMP response message to the device of the source IP address, i.e. the measurement device.

The data carried by the measurement message data field is data represented by an ICMP format, and the format of the measurement message data field is shown in fig. 12, and the measurement message data field comprises a plurality of GRE message headers, an IP message header using a UDP protocol, a task identifier, a message sequence number and a message timestamp. The GRE header is used for setting a reverse path in the forwarding path, that is, a path from the second end device to the measurement device. The measuring equipment sends a response message to the former hop equipment of the measuring equipment according to the path control field, the IP message header field and the measuring message data field, and then sends the message to the measuring equipment according to the destination IP address in the IP message header in the measuring message data field. The first type of measurement messages from the same measurement task carry the same task identification, different measurement periods are distinguished through message serial numbers, and message time stamps are marked when the measurement equipment sends and receives the messages.

The setting of the forwarding path can be realized through the path control field, the IP message header field and the measurement message data field.

1004. The measurement device sends a first type of measurement message to the first end device.

1005. The first end device decapsulates the first type of measurement message.

1006. The first end device sends the processed first type measurement message to the second end device.

Steps 1004 to 1006 in this embodiment are similar to steps 404 to 406 in the embodiment shown in fig. 4, and are not repeated here.

1007. The second end device generates a response message.

When the second end device receives the processed first type measurement message, the GRE message header in the path control field is stripped completely, the outermost layer is an IP message header using ICMP protocol, according to RFC 792, the second end device receives the message of ICMP protocol and then places the ICMP data field carried by the ICMP message into an ICMP response message, and sends back the ICMP response message to the measuring device according to the routing protocol, wherein each first type measurement message corresponds to one ICMP response message.

1008. The second end device sends a response message to the measurement device.

The second terminal device sends the ICMP response message to the connected target switch according to the routing protocol, a processing unit in the target switch extracts a data field in the ICMP response message, the data field comprises information of a reverse path represented by a multi-layer GRE message header, and the processing unit can be a CPU or a chip. The processing unit generates a target message according to the data field, and the format of the target message is shown in fig. 12. And the target exchanger releases the GRE message header of the outermost layer of the target message and forwards the GRE message header to the next hop device according to the IP address in the GRE message header of the second layer. Because the network quality of the network path between the first end device and the second end device needs to be measured, the target message is forwarded to the first end device and then sent from the first end device to the measuring device.

When the processed target message reaches the former hop device of the measuring device, the GRE message header is released, the IP message header and other data are left, and the former hop device sends the processed target message back to the measuring device according to the destination IP address in the IP message header.

The first type of measurement message processed by each jump device and the target message processed by each jump device are sent to the measurement device to be the second type of measurement message. When the measuring device receives the second type of measuring message, the receiving time stamp is marked in the second type of measuring message.

1009. The measuring device analyzes the network quality of the network path to be measured.

The method of analyzing the network quality in step 1009 in this embodiment is similar to the method in the embodiment 409 shown in fig. 4, and is not described here again. It should be noted that, the second type measurement message received by the measurement device in step 1009 is a corresponding response message processed by each hop device on the reverse path in the forwarding path after the first type measurement message processed by each hop device on the forward path in the forwarding path is sent to the second end device, but the second type measurement message received by the measurement device in step 409 is a first type measurement message processed by each hop device on the forwarding path.

1010. The measurement device generates a target task.

1011. The measuring device sends a third type of measuring message to the first end device.

Steps 1010 and 1011 in this embodiment are similar to the method for determining the fault location in steps 412 and 413 in the foregoing embodiment shown in fig. 4, but the format of the third type measurement packet generated in this embodiment needs to be the same as that in step 1004, if the second endpoint device in the target task is on the reverse path of the forwarding path, the second endpoint device also needs to generate an ICMP response packet, where the response packet carries ICMP data fields in the third type measurement packet, and the method for determining the fault location is not described herein again, and the target switch performs processing, and forwards the third type measurement packet to the next hop device according to the obtained IP address.

In this embodiment, for the case that the second end device cannot release the GRE encapsulation, by using the ICMP protocol, the second end device places the ICMP data field in the first type measurement packet into the ICMP response packet, and sends the ICMP response packet to the connected target switch, and then the target switch generates the target packet according to the ICMP data field of the ICMP response packet, and then releases the tunnel encapsulation on the target packet, thereby implementing the reverse path setting and expanding the application scenario of the measurement scheme.

The above methods are all described in terms of the case where the measurement device can create a measurement task and generate a first type of measurement message according to the measurement task, and in practical application, as shown in fig. 13, the measurement device 1302 only has a function of generating a message, and the management device 1301 creates or modifies the measurement task and analyzes the network quality of the network path to be measured. In the case shown in fig. 13, in the method shown in fig. 4, the task of generating measurement in step 401, determining that there is no fault in the reference path in step 402, analyzing the network quality in step 409, and generating the target task in step 410 are all performed by the management device 1301, and similarly, in the method shown in fig. 10, the task of generating measurement in step 1001, determining that there is no fault in the reference path in step 1002, analyzing the network quality in step 1009, and generating the target task in step 1010 are all performed by the management device 1301, and specific procedures in the steps are not repeated here.

It should be noted that, the management device analyzes the network path to be measured through the measurement information sent by the measurement device, specifically, the measurement information may be the number of the first type of measurement messages, the number of the second type of measurement messages, and the sending timestamp information and the receiving timestamp information in the second type of measurement messages, and the management device analyzes the network quality of the network path to be measured according to these information. Or the measurement information is the second type measurement message, the measurement device directly sends the second type measurement message to the management device, and the management device analyzes the network quality according to the second type measurement message.

When the measurement device is only responsible for generating a message, the measurement device may also be a switch, a router or a server with a message generating function, where the measurement device may be used as a first end device, as shown in fig. 14. In this case, there is no reference path, and the forwarding path of the first type measurement packet is the network path to be measured.

Further, when the measurement device is the first end device, a forwarding path of the first measurement message may not be set, the first measurement message is forwarded according to the routing protocol, and the forwarding path is not controllable, but the network quality between the first end device and the second end device may be measured, and the method is also to calculate the packet loss rate according to the number of the transmitted messages and the number of the received messages, and calculate the time delay according to the message timestamp, which is not described in detail herein. If a network path to be measured is found to have a fault, the location of the fault cannot be determined.

Alternatively, the method described with reference to fig. 10 may be used, but the ICMP data field does not include information on the reverse path represented by the multi-layer GRE header, and does not undergo message conversion by the destination switch. Specifically, the forward path information from the first end device to the second end device is encapsulated in the first type of measurement message through GRE, when the first type of measurement message reaches the second end device, the GRE message header of the outer layer is released, the second end device sends a response message to the first end device according to RFC 792, the response message carries an ICMP data field of the first type of measurement message, and the ICMP data field is the same as the ICMP data field described in fig. 10 except that the ICMP data field does not include the reverse path information. Thereby, the network quality between the first end device and the second end device can be measured, and the method is similar to the method in the embodiment shown in fig. 10, and will not be described herein. In this embodiment, the forward path information may be set, and the reverse path information may not be set. When a network path to be measured is found to be faulty, it may be determined whether the forward path is faulty, and if so, which link in the forward path is faulty.

The network quality measurement method in the embodiment of the present application is described above, and the measurement device in the embodiment of the present application is described below, referring to fig. 15, and one embodiment of the measurement device in the embodiment of the present application includes:

a generating unit 1501, configured to generate a first type of measurement packet, where the first type of measurement packet includes information of a first end device, information of a second end device, and a task identifier, where the first end device and the second end device are endpoints of a network path to be measured; the network path includes a forward path from the first end device to the second end device and a reverse path from the second end device to the first end device;

a sending unit 1502, configured to send a first type of measurement packet;

the receiving unit 1503 is configured to receive a second type of measurement packet, where the second type of measurement packet is a packet sent by the second end device back to the measurement device after the corresponding first type of measurement packet arrives at the second end device from the measurement device through the first end device; the first type of measurement message with the task identifier and the second type of measurement message are used for measuring the network quality of the network path.

Referring to fig. 16, another embodiment of the measuring apparatus according to the embodiment of the present application includes:

A generating unit 1601, configured to generate a first type of measurement packet, where the first type of measurement packet includes information of a first end device, information of a second end device, and a task identifier, where the first end device and the second end device are endpoints of a network path to be measured; the network path includes a forward path from the first end device to the second end device and a reverse path from the second end device to the first end device;

a transmitting unit 1602, configured to transmit a first type of measurement packet;

a receiving unit 1603, configured to receive a second type of measurement packet, where the second type of measurement packet is a packet sent back to the measurement device by the second end device after the corresponding first type of measurement packet arrives at the second end device from the measurement device through the first end device; the first type of measurement message with the task identifier and the second type of measurement message are used for measuring the network quality of the network path.

The receiving unit 1603 is further configured to receive a measurement task sent by the management device, where the measurement task is used to generate a first type of measurement packet.

The sending unit 1602 is further configured to send measurement information to the management device according to the first type measurement packet and the second type measurement packet, where the measurement information is used for the management device to measure network quality of the network path.

The first type measurement message comprises forward path information, wherein the forward path information is used for indicating the first network equipment on the forward path to send the first type measurement message processed by the first network equipment to the next hop equipment.

The first type measurement message comprises reverse path information, wherein the reverse path information is used for indicating the second network equipment on the reverse path to send the first type measurement message processed by the second network equipment to the next hop equipment.

The second end equipment is equipment incapable of releasing the tunnel encapsulation format message, the second end equipment is connected with the target switch, the data carried by the first type of measurement message is data of an Internet Control Message (ICMP) format, the data of the ICMP format comprises reverse path information encapsulated in the tunnel encapsulation format, and the data of the ICMP format is used for generating the target message by the target switch after being sent to the target switch by the second end equipment; the target message comprises reverse path information packaged in a tunnel packaging format, wherein the reverse path information is used for indicating a third network device on the reverse path to send the target message processed by the third network device to next hop equipment.

The measurement apparatus further includes: the obtaining unit 1604 is configured to obtain a first number of sent first type measurement packets including task identifiers and a second number of received second type measurement packets including the same task identifiers, where the first number and the second number are used to determine a packet loss rate of a network path.

The second type of measurement message comprises a first timestamp and a second timestamp, the first timestamp is marked when the measurement device sends the first type of measurement message, the second timestamp is marked when the measurement device receives the second type of measurement message, and the first timestamp and the second timestamp are used for determining the time delay of the network path.

The first type of measurement message comprises information of a reference path from the measurement device to the first end device and from the first end device to the measurement device, wherein the information of the reference path is used for indicating a fourth network device on the reference path to send the first type of measurement message processed by the fourth network device to the next hop device; the network quality of the reference path is used to analyze the network quality of the network path.

The measurement apparatus further includes: a determining unit 1605, configured to determine that the reference path has no fault.

The generating unit 1601 is further configured to generate a third type of measurement packet, where information of one endpoint in the third type of measurement packet is information of the first end device, information of another endpoint in the third type of measurement packet is information of an intermediate device on the network path to be measured, and the intermediate device is any device on the network path except the first end device;

The sending unit 1602 is further configured to send a third type of measurement packet, where the third type of measurement packet is used to determine a failure location of the network path.

In this embodiment, each unit in the measuring device performs the operation of the measuring device in the embodiment shown in fig. 4 and 10, which is not described herein.

Referring now to fig. 17, another embodiment of the measuring apparatus according to the present application includes:

a central processing unit 1701, a memory 1705, an input/output interface 1704, a network interface 1703 and a power supply 1702;

memory 1705 is a transient memory or persistent memory;

the central processor 1701 communicates with the memory 1705 and executes the instruction operations in the memory 1705 to perform the methods of the embodiments shown in fig. 4 and 10 described above.

Embodiments of the present application also provide a computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed on a computer, cause the computer to perform the methods of the embodiments shown in fig. 4 and 10.

Further, embodiments of the present application also provide a computer program product containing instructions which, when run on a computer, cause the computer to perform the method of the embodiments shown in fig. 4 and 10.

Further, the embodiment of the present application also provides a chip system, where the chip system includes at least one processor and a communication interface, where the communication interface and the at least one processor are interconnected by a line, and the at least one processor is configured to execute a computer program or instructions to perform the methods in the embodiments shown in fig. 4 and fig. 10.

In the several embodiments provided in the present application, it should be understood that the disclosed systems, devices, and methods may be implemented in other manners. For example, the apparatus embodiments described above are merely illustrative, e.g., the division of the units is merely a logical function division, and there may be additional divisions when actually implemented, e.g., multiple units or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be omitted or not performed. Alternatively, the coupling or direct coupling or communication connection shown or discussed with each other may be an indirect coupling or communication connection via some interfaces, devices or units, which may be in electrical, mechanical or other form.

The units described as separate units may or may not be physically separate, and units shown as units may or may not be physical units, may be located in one place, or may be distributed on a plurality of network units. Some or all of the units may be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the solution of this embodiment.

In addition, each functional unit in the embodiments of the present application may be integrated in one processing unit, or each unit may exist alone physically, or two or more units may be integrated in one unit. The integrated units may be implemented in hardware or in software functional units.

It will be clear to those skilled in the art that, for convenience and brevity of description, specific working procedures of the above-described systems, apparatuses and units may refer to corresponding procedures in the foregoing method embodiments, which are not repeated herein.

Claims

1. A method for measuring network quality, comprising:

the method comprises the steps that measurement equipment generates a first type of measurement message, wherein the first type of measurement message comprises information of first end equipment, information of second end equipment and task identification, and the first end equipment and the second end equipment are endpoints of a network path to be measured; the network path includes a forward path from the first end device to the second end device and a reverse path from the second end device to the first end device;

the measurement equipment sends the first type of measurement message;

The measurement equipment receives a second type of measurement message, wherein the second type of measurement message is a corresponding message sent back to the measurement equipment by the second end equipment after the first type of measurement message passes through the first end equipment from the measurement equipment to the second end equipment; the first type of measurement message and the second type of measurement message containing the task identifier are used for measuring the network quality of the network path.

2. The network quality measurement method according to claim 1, characterized in that the method further comprises:

the measurement equipment receives a measurement task sent by the management equipment, and the measurement task is used for generating the first type of measurement message;

and the measurement equipment sends measurement information to the management equipment according to the first type of measurement messages and the second type of measurement messages, wherein the measurement information is used for the management equipment to measure the network quality of the network path.

3. The network quality measurement method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the first type of measurement packet includes information of the forward path, where the information of the forward path is used to instruct a first network device on the forward path to send the first type of measurement packet after being processed by the first network device to a next hop device.

4. A network quality measurement method according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the first type of measurement packet includes information of the reverse path, where the information of the reverse path is used to instruct a second network device on the reverse path to send the first type of measurement packet after being processed by the second network device to a next hop device.

5. The network quality measurement method according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the second end device is a device incapable of releasing a tunnel encapsulation format packet, the second end device is connected to a target switch, the data carried by the first type of measurement packet is data in an ICMP format of an internet control packet, the data in the ICMP format includes information of the reverse path encapsulated in the tunnel encapsulation format, and the data in the ICMP format is used for the target switch to generate a target packet after being sent to the target switch by the second end device; the target message comprises information of the reverse path encapsulated in a tunnel encapsulation format, wherein the information of the reverse path is used for indicating a third network device on the reverse path to send the target message processed by the third network device to next hop equipment.

6. The network quality measurement method according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein after the measurement device receives the second type of measurement packet, the method further comprises:

the measurement device obtains a first quantity of the sent first-type measurement messages containing the task identifier and a second quantity of the received second-type measurement messages containing the same task identifier, wherein the first quantity and the second quantity are used for determining a packet loss rate of the network path.

7. The network quality measurement method according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the second type of measurement packet includes a first timestamp and a second timestamp, the first timestamp being marked when the measurement device transmits the first type of measurement packet, the second timestamp being marked when the measurement device receives the second type of measurement packet, the first timestamp and the second timestamp being used to determine a delay of the network path.

8. The network quality measurement method according to any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the first type measurement packet includes information of a reference path from the measurement device to the first end device and from the first end device to the measurement device, the information of the reference path being used to instruct a fourth network device on the reference path to send the first type measurement packet processed by the fourth network device to a next hop device; the network quality of the reference path is used to analyze the network quality of the network path.

9. The network quality measurement method of claim 8, wherein before the measurement device generates the first type of measurement message, the method further comprises:

the measurement device determines that the reference path is not faulty.

10. The network quality measurement method according to any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein if there is a failure in the network path, the method further comprises:

the measurement device generates a third type of measurement message, wherein the third type of measurement message comprises information of endpoints of a target path, the information of one endpoint of the target path is the information of the first end device, the information of the other endpoint is the information of an intermediate device on the network path, and the intermediate device is any device on the network path except the first end device;

the measurement device sends the third type of measurement message, wherein the third type of measurement message is used for determining the network quality of the target path, and the network quality of the target path is used for determining the fault position of the network path.

11. A network quality measurement system, comprising a management device and a measurement device;

The measurement device being adapted to perform the network quality measurement method of any one of claims 1 to 10;

the management device is used for triggering the measurement device to execute the network quality measurement method.

12. A measurement device comprising a memory and a processor, wherein:

the memory is used for storing program codes;

the processor is configured to execute the program code to cause the measuring device to implement the network quality measurement method of any one of claims 1 to 10.