CN108810935B

CN108810935B - Flow forwarding method and device

Info

Publication number: CN108810935B
Application number: CN201810503091.9A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 缪琛
Original assignee: Hangzhou H3C Technologies Co Ltd
Current assignee: Hangzhou H3C Technologies Co Ltd
Priority date: 2018-05-23
Filing date: 2018-05-23
Publication date: 2021-07-23
Anticipated expiration: 2038-05-23
Also published as: CN108810935A

Abstract

The invention provides a traffic forwarding method and a traffic forwarding device, wherein the method comprises the following steps: sending a detection message to the MEC at regular time through an output interface in the interface group; when the detection message is not received from the return port in the interface group within the preset time, determining that the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group is in an invalid state; the flow guide rule corresponding to the interface group is used for forwarding the flow matched with the flow guide rule to the MEC through the interface group; and when the flow is received from the eNodeB side and the target drainage rule of the effective state matched with the flow does not exist, forwarding the flow according to a local forwarding table entry. The embodiment of the invention can improve the networking reliability.

Description

Flow forwarding method and device

Technical Field

The present invention relates to the field of network communication technologies, and in particular, to a traffic forwarding method and apparatus.

Background

MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) is a key technology for 5G (fifth generation Mobile communication network) evolution. By deploying functions of calculation, storage, distribution, big data analysis and the like in a wireless edge network, the capability of a 4G (fourth generation mobile communication network) &5G mobile network can be opened to internet application. The network deployment enables the traditional wireless network to be closer to users and bear localized services, so that the user experience is improved, and more values of the edge network are exerted.

At present, a schematic diagram of a networking architecture for deploying an MEC technology in a network may be as shown in fig. 1, in the networking, when an MEC fails, a switch still introduces traffic into the MEC for processing, the MEC determines to perform local service processing or enter a core network for processing, and due to the MEC failure, the traffic cannot be further forwarded after being introduced into the MEC, so that the traffic may be interrupted, and networking reliability is low.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention provides a traffic forwarding method and a traffic forwarding device, which are used for solving the problem that traffic is interrupted due to an MEC fault in the existing network deployment of the MEC.

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a traffic forwarding method, applied to a switch in a networking deployed with an MEC, where the networking further includes an eNodeB and an EPC, the switch establishes a connection with the MEC through an interface group, and a connection is established between the switch and the EPC, the method includes:

sending a detection message to the MEC at regular time through an output interface in the interface group;

when the detection message is not received from the return port in the interface group within the preset time, determining that the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group is in an invalid state; the flow guide rule corresponding to the interface group is used for forwarding the flow matched with the flow guide rule to the MEC through the interface group;

and when the flow is received from the eNodeB side and the target drainage rule of the effective state matched with the flow does not exist, forwarding the flow according to a local forwarding table entry.

With reference to the first aspect, in a first possible implementation manner, the method further includes:

and when the traffic is received from the eNodeB side and a target drainage rule of an effective state matched with the traffic is determined to exist, forwarding the traffic according to the target drainage rule.

With reference to the first possible implementation manner of the first aspect, in a second possible implementation manner, the forwarding the traffic according to the target drainage rule includes:

and if the target drainage rule is the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group, forwarding the flow to the MEC through an outlet interface in the target interface group corresponding to the target drainage rule.

With reference to the second possible implementation manner of the first aspect, in a third possible implementation manner, after the forwarding the traffic to the MEC through an egress interface in a target interface group corresponding to the target drainage rule, the method further includes:

and when receiving the flow from the return port in the target interface group, forwarding the flow according to the local forwarding table entry.

With reference to the first aspect and any one implementation manner of the first possible implementation manner to the third possible implementation manner of the first aspect, in a fourth possible implementation manner, the output interface and the return port included in the interface group are the same interface.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a switch applied in a networking with MECs deployed, the networking further including an eNodeB and an EPC, wherein the switch establishes a connection with the MECs through an interface group, and a connection is established between the switch and the EPC, the apparatus includes:

a sending unit, configured to send a probe packet to the MEC at regular time through an egress interface in the interface group;

a receiving unit, configured to receive the detection packet through a return port;

the determining unit is used for determining that the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group is in an invalid state when the receiving unit does not receive the detection message from the return port in the interface group within preset time; the flow guide rule corresponding to the interface group is used for forwarding the flow matched with the flow guide rule to the MEC through the interface group;

the determining unit is further configured to determine whether a target drainage rule of an effective state matching the traffic exists when the receiving unit receives the traffic from the eNodeB;

the sending unit is further configured to forward the traffic according to a local forwarding table entry when the determining unit determines that the target traffic guidance rule in the valid state matching the traffic does not exist.

With reference to the second aspect, in a first possible implementation manner, the sending unit is further configured to forward the traffic according to a target drainage rule when the determining unit determines that the target drainage rule of the valid state matching the traffic exists.

With reference to the first possible implementation manner of the second aspect, in a second possible implementation manner, the sending unit is specifically configured to forward the traffic to the MEC through an egress interface in a target interface group corresponding to the target drainage rule if the target drainage rule is a drainage rule corresponding to the interface group.

With reference to the second possible implementation manner of the second aspect, in a third possible implementation manner, the sending unit is further configured to forward, when the receiving unit receives a traffic from a return port in the target interface group, the traffic according to a local forwarding table entry.

With reference to the second aspect and any one implementation manner of the first possible implementation manner to the third possible implementation manner of the second aspect, in a fourth possible implementation manner, the output interface and the return port included in the interface group are the same interface.

According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided a traffic forwarding device comprising a processor and a machine-readable storage medium storing machine-executable instructions executable by the processor, the processor being caused by the machine-executable instructions to:

According to a fourth aspect of the invention, there is provided a machine-readable storage medium storing machine-executable instructions that, when invoked and executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

By applying the technical scheme disclosed by the invention, on one hand, the switch establishes connection with the MEC through the interface group, sets the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group, and drains the flow matched with the drainage rule to the MEC. And on the other hand, the switch is connected with the EPC, and further, the switch can send a detection message to the MEC through an outlet interface of the interface group, and determine whether the MEC fails according to whether the detection message is received from the return port within the preset time. And when the detection message is not received from the return port within the preset time, the switch sets the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group to be in an invalid state. Therefore, for the traffic received from the eNodeB side, when there is no target drainage rule in the matched effective state, the switch can directly forward according to the local forwarding table entry, thereby realizing service recovery when the MEC fails under the condition of only deploying a single switch, avoiding traffic interruption caused by the fact that the traffic is drained to the MEC in the failure state, and improving the reliability of networking.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is an architectural diagram of a networking that deploys MECs;

fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of a networking architecture for forwarding traffic according to an embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 3 is a schematic flowchart of a traffic forwarding method according to an embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a specific application scenario provided in the embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 5 is a schematic structural diagram of a traffic forwarding apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 6 is a schematic hardware structure diagram of a traffic forwarding apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

In order to make those skilled in the art better understand the technical solution in the embodiment of the present invention, a networking structure to which the embodiment of the present invention is applied will be described below.

Referring to fig. 2, which is a schematic diagram of a networking architecture for forwarding traffic according to an embodiment of the present invention, as shown in fig. 2, in the networking, a switch establishes a connection with an MEC through an interface group (which may also be referred to as a service loopback linkage group), and a connection is established between the switch and an EPC. The interface group can comprise an outlet interface and a return port.

In the networking shown in fig. 2, a traffic guidance rule corresponding to an interface group may be configured on an exchange, and when the exchange receives traffic from an eNodeB (base station), the exchange may forward the traffic matching the traffic guidance rule to the MEC through the interface group corresponding to the traffic guidance rule.

In order to avoid flow interruption caused by MEC failure, the switch can send a detection message to the MEC through an outgoing interface in the interface group at regular time; when the MEC receives the detection message sent by the switch, the MEC can send the detection message to the switch through the interface connected with the return port in the interface group.

Correspondingly, when the switch receives the detection message from the return port in the interface group, the switch can determine that the interface group is valid and set the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group to be in a valid state; when the switch does not receive the probe packet from the return port in the interface group within the preset time (the preset time after the probe packet is sent from the egress interface in the interface group), the switch may determine that the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group is in an invalid state.

When the switch receives traffic from the eNodeB side, the switch may query whether there is a drainage rule of valid state (referred to herein as a target drainage rule) matching the received traffic; and if the local forwarding table entry does not exist, forwarding the received flow according to the local forwarding table entry.

As can be seen, in the networking shown in fig. 2, when an MEC is in a failure state, the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group to which the switch is connected to the MEC is set to be in an invalid state, so that traffic interruption caused by forwarding traffic to the MEC in the failure state can be avoided, and the networking reliability is improved.

It should be noted that the number of MECs in the networking shown in fig. 2 may be multiple, and accordingly, the switch may establish connection with the multiple MECs through multiple interface groups, respectively; at this time, the switch may be configured with the drainage rules corresponding to the interface groups, so that when the switch receives traffic from the eNodeB, the switch may forward the received traffic to the corresponding MEC through the interface group corresponding to the matched drainage rule.

In order to make the aforementioned objects, features and advantages of the embodiments of the present invention more comprehensible, embodiments of the present invention are described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Referring to fig. 3, a schematic flow chart of a traffic forwarding method according to an embodiment of the present invention is provided, where the traffic forwarding method may be applied to a switch in a networking shown in fig. 2, and as shown in fig. 3, the traffic forwarding method may include the following steps:

step 301, sending a detection message to the MEC at regular time through an egress interface in the interface group.

In the embodiment of the invention, in order to enable the switch to timely know whether the MEC has a fault, the switch can regularly send the detection message to the MEC through the output interface in the interface group.

For example, the switch may send a probe packet to the MEC at preset intervals (which may be set according to an actual scenario) through an egress interface in the interface group.

It should be noted that, in the embodiment of the present invention, when there are multiple MECs, that is, there are multiple interface groups, the switch may send the probe packet to the corresponding MEC at a fixed time through the outgoing interface in each interface group.

The switch may send the detection message through the egress interfaces of different interface groups at the same or different time.

For example, assuming that the switch is connected to the MEC1 and the MEC2 through the interface group 1 and the interface group 2, the switch may send the probe packet every other first cycle through the egress interface in the interface group 1, and send the probe packet every other second cycle through the egress interface in the interface group 2; the first period and the second period may be the same or different.

For ease of understanding and description, the following description will take the example where only one interface group is provided on a switch (i.e., only one MEC exists in the networking).

In the embodiment of the present invention, when receiving a detection message sent by an exchange, an MEC may send the detection message to the exchange through a port connected to a return port in an interface group on the exchange.

Step 302, when the detection message is not received from the return port in the interface group within the preset time, determining that the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group is in an invalid state.

In the embodiment of the present invention, after the switch sends the detection packet through the outgoing interface in the interface group, if the switch does not receive the detection packet from the return port in the interface group within the preset time (which may be set according to an actual scenario, for example, a sending period of 3 detection packets), the switch may consider that the MEC connected to the interface group is faulty, and at this time, the switch may determine that the interface group is invalid, and set the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group to be in an invalid state.

Wherein, the switch can not carry out the flow drainage according to the drainage rule of invalid state.

In one example, the above-mentioned drainage rule may be an ACL (Access Control List) entry. The matching item of the ACL entry may be identification information of traffic, such as a source IP address or an ingress interface, and the action item may be forwarding the traffic matched with the matching item through an egress interface in the interface group.

For example, assuming that a switch needs to steer traffic of eNodeB1 to a MEC, and eNodeB1 accesses the switch through port1 on the switch, ACL entries configured on the switch for steering may be as shown in table 1:

TABLE 1

Matching items	Action item
		The ingress interface for traffic is port1	Forwarding traffic over interface groups

It should be noted that, in the embodiment of the present invention, an initial state of a drainage rule configured on the switch may be an effective state, and accordingly, when the switch determines that an interface group is invalid by using the above-mentioned manner of sending a probe packet, the switch may update the interface group from the effective state to the invalid state.

Or, the initial state of the drainage rule configured on the switch may be an invalid state, and accordingly, when the switch determines that the interface group is valid by the above-mentioned manner of sending the detection packet, the switch may update the interface group from the invalid state to the valid state.

And step 303, when the traffic is received from the eNodeB and it is determined that there is no target traffic guidance rule in an effective state matching the traffic, forwarding the traffic according to the local forwarding table entry.

In the embodiment of the present invention, the priority of the drainage rule configured on the switch may be set to be higher than the priority of the forwarding table entry.

Accordingly, when the switch receives traffic from the eNodeB side, the switch may first query whether there is a target drainage rule of a valid state matching the traffic according to the traffic.

The switch can inquire a local drainage rule according to the flow received from the eNodeB side, and if the drainage rule matched with the flow does not exist, the switch determines that a target drainage rule in an effective state matched with the flow does not exist; if the drainage rule matched with the flow exists, further determining whether the drainage rule is in an effective state, and if the drainage rule is in the effective state, determining that a target drainage rule in the effective state matched with the flow exists; and if the flow is in the invalid state, determining that the target drainage rule of the valid state matched with the flow does not exist.

Or, the switch may query a local drainage rule in an effective state according to the traffic received from the eNodeB side, and if there is a drainage rule matching the traffic, determine the drainage rule as a target drainage rule matching the traffic; and if the drainage rule matched with the flow does not exist, determining that the target drainage rule in the effective state matched with the flow does not exist.

In the embodiment of the invention, when the switch receives the flow from the eNodeB side and determines that the target flow guiding rule of the effective state matched with the flow does not exist, the flow is forwarded according to the local forwarding table entry.

For example, the switch may query the local MAC entry based on the destination MAC address of the traffic to determine an egress port of the traffic and forward the traffic from the determined egress port.

In the embodiment of the present invention, for a device in a core network, when a switch generates a forwarding table entry to the device, an output interface of the switch is an interface connected with an EPC, so that, for a traffic sent to the core network at an eNodeB side, the switch sends the traffic to the EPC through the interface connected with the EPC when forwarding according to a local forwarding table entry.

The processing mode after the EPC receives the traffic forwarded by the switch may refer to related description in the prior art, which is not described in this embodiment of the present invention again.

It can be seen that, in the method flow shown in fig. 3, by configuring a drainage rule corresponding to an interface group connected to an MEC on an exchange, the drainage rule is used to instruct the exchange to forward a matched flow to the MEC through the interface group, and send a detection packet to the MEC through an outgoing interface of the interface group at a fixed time, a return port receives the detection packet to detect whether the MEC fails, and when it is detected that the MEC fails, the corresponding drainage rule is set to an invalid state, which avoids flow interruption caused by forwarding the flow to the MEC in the failed state, and improves networking reliability.

Further, in one embodiment of the present invention, the traffic forwarding scheme may further include:

and when the traffic is received from the eNodeB side and the target drainage rule of the effective state matched with the traffic is determined to exist, forwarding the traffic according to the target drainage rule.

In this embodiment, when the switch receives traffic from the eNodeB side and determines that there is a target drainage rule of a valid state matching the traffic, the traffic is forwarded according to the target drainage rule.

Further, in this embodiment, if the target drainage rule is the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group, the traffic is forwarded to the MEC through the outgoing interface in the target interface group corresponding to the target drainage rule.

In this embodiment, the configured drainage rules on the switch may include, in addition to the drainage rules of the corresponding interface group (i.e., the drainage rules for draining to the MEC), other drainage rules, such as drainage rules for draining to the EPC, or drainage rules for draining to other devices connected by the switch.

Accordingly, when the switch receives traffic from the eNodeB and determines that there is a target traffic guidance rule in a valid state matching the traffic, the switch may further determine whether the target traffic guidance rule is a traffic guidance rule corresponding to an interface group, and if so, the switch may forward the traffic from an outgoing interface of the interface group (referred to as a target interface group herein) corresponding to the target traffic guidance rule to a corresponding MEC.

In the embodiment of the present invention, when receiving the traffic forwarded by the switch, the MEC may determine to perform local processing on the traffic (forward to the local network for processing) or forward to the core network for processing according to a preset policy.

It should be noted that, the specific strategy for the MEC to determine to locally process the traffic or forward the traffic to the core network for processing and the specific implementation of the MEC to locally process the traffic may refer to related descriptions in the prior art, which is not described in detail herein in the embodiment of the present invention.

In the embodiment of the present invention, when the MEC determines that the traffic needs to be forwarded to the core network for processing, the MEC may send the traffic to the switch through the interface connected to the return port in the interface group of the switch.

Accordingly, in this embodiment, when the switch receives traffic from a return port in the target interface group, the switch may forward the traffic according to the local forwarding table entry.

For example, the switch may query the MAC table entry based on the destination MAC address of the traffic to determine an egress port of the traffic and forward the traffic through the determined egress port.

Further, in an embodiment of the present invention, in order to save port resources of the switch, the egress interface and the return port in the interface group may be the same interface.

In this embodiment, when the MEC receives the probe packet sent by the switch, the probe packet may be sent to the switch again from the ingress interface of the probe packet.

In addition, when the MEC receives traffic sent by the switch and determines that the traffic needs to be forwarded to the core network, the MEC may resend the traffic to the switch from the ingress interface of the traffic.

In order to enable those skilled in the art to better understand the technical solution provided by the embodiment of the present invention, the technical solution provided by the embodiment of the present invention is described below with reference to a specific application scenario.

Referring to fig. 4, a schematic diagram of a specific application scenario provided by an embodiment of the present invention is shown in fig. 4, in the application scenario, enodebs 1-10 are connected to a switch through ports 1-10, respectively, Port11 and Port12 on the switch form an interface group (where Port11 is an outgoing interface and Port12 is a return Port), and the switch is connected to an MEC through the interface group (assuming that Port11 of the switch is connected to Port21 of the MEC and Port12 is connected to Port22 of the MEC), and the switch is connected to an EPC through Port 13.

In this embodiment, assuming that the switch needs to steer traffic of eNodeB1 and eNodeB3 to the MEC, an ACL entry for steering to the MEC as shown in table 2 may be generated on the switch:

TABLE 2

Matching items	Action item	Status of state
			The incoming interface of the traffic is Port1	Forwarding over Port11	Active state
The incoming interface of the traffic is Port3	Forwarding over Port11	Active state

Wherein, the initial state of each ACL table entry is a valid state.

In this embodiment, the switch may send probe messages to the MEC through Port11 every preset period (assumed to be T); when the MEC receives the detection message, the MEC can resend the detection message to the switch through the Port 22; the switch receives the probe message from Port12 and determines that the MEC is available.

In this case, when the switch receives traffic from the eNodeB side, the switch may query the ACL entry shown in table 2 according to the incoming interface of the traffic to determine whether there is a matching entry, and if so, send the traffic to the MEC through Port 11; otherwise, inquiring the local MAC table entry according to the destination MAC address of the flow for forwarding.

After receiving the traffic sent by the switch, the MEC may determine to locally process the traffic according to a preset policy or forward the traffic to the core network for processing.

In this embodiment, when the MEC determines that the traffic needs to be forwarded to the core network process, the MEC may resend the traffic to the switch through Port 22; when the switch receives traffic from Port12, it queries the native MAC address for forwarding based on the destination MAC address of the traffic.

In this embodiment, for traffic received from Port1 or Port3, the switch may send to the MEC through Port 11; and the rest flows directly inquire the local MAC table items according to the destination MAC addresses of the flows for forwarding.

Assuming that an MEC fails at a certain time, at this time, after the switch sends a probe packet from Port11, the switch will not receive the probe packet from Port12, and when the switch does not receive the probe packet from Port12 within 3T, the switch may determine that the MEC fails, and at this time, the switch may set the corresponding drainage rule to an invalid state, that is, the drainage rule may be updated as shown in table 3:

TABLE 3

Matching items	Action item	Status of state
			The incoming interface of the traffic is Port1	Forwarding over Port11	Invalid state
The incoming interface of the traffic is Port3	Forwarding over Port11	Invalid state

In this case, when the switch receives traffic from the eNodeB, because there is no drainage rule in an effective state, the switch may directly query the local MAC entry according to the destination MAC address of the traffic, and forward the traffic to the EPC through Port13, thereby avoiding traffic interruption caused by the traffic being drained to the MEC when the MEC fails, and improving networking reliability.

As can be seen from the above description, in the technical solution provided in the embodiment of the present invention, on one hand, the switch establishes a connection with the MEC through the interface group, sets the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group, and drains the traffic matched with the drainage rule to the MEC. And on the other hand, the switch is connected with the EPC, and further, the switch can send a detection message to the MEC through an outlet interface of the interface group, and determine whether the MEC fails according to whether the detection message is received from the return port within the preset time. And when the detection message is not received from the return port within the preset time, the switch sets the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group to be in an invalid state. Therefore, for the traffic received from the eNodeB side, when there is no target drainage rule in the matched effective state, the switch can directly forward according to the local forwarding table entry, thereby realizing service recovery when the MEC fails under the condition of only deploying a single switch, avoiding traffic interruption caused by the fact that the traffic is drained to the MEC in the failure state, and improving the reliability of networking.

Referring to fig. 5, a schematic structural diagram of a traffic forwarding device is provided for an embodiment of the present invention, where the traffic forwarding device may be applied to a switch in the foregoing method embodiment, and as shown in fig. 5, the traffic forwarding device may include:

a sending unit 510, configured to send a probe packet to the MEC at regular time through an egress interface in the interface group;

a receiving unit 520, configured to receive the detection packet through a return port;

a determining unit 530, configured to determine that the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group is in an invalid state when the receiving unit does not receive the detection packet from the return port in the interface group within a preset time; the flow guide rule corresponding to the interface group is used for forwarding the flow matched with the flow guide rule to the MEC through the interface group;

the determining unit 530 is further configured to determine whether there is a target drainage rule of a valid status matching the traffic when the receiving unit 520 receives the traffic from the eNodeB side;

the sending unit 510 is further configured to forward the traffic according to a local forwarding table entry when the determining unit 530 determines that there is no target traffic guidance rule in an active state matching the traffic.

In an optional embodiment, the sending unit 510 is further configured to, when the determining unit 530 determines that there is a target traffic rule of a valid status matching the traffic, forward the traffic according to the target traffic rule.

In an optional embodiment, the sending unit 510 is specifically configured to forward the traffic to the MEC through an egress interface in a target interface group corresponding to the target drainage rule if the target drainage rule is a drainage rule corresponding to the interface group.

In an optional embodiment, the sending unit 510 is further configured to forward, when the receiving unit 520 receives traffic from a backhaul port in the target interface group, the traffic according to a local forwarding table entry.

In an optional embodiment, the output interface and the return port included in the interface group are the same interface.

Fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of a hardware structure of a traffic forwarding apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention. The traffic forwarding device may include a processor 601, a machine-readable storage medium 602 having machine-executable instructions stored thereon. The processor 601 and the machine-readable storage medium 602 may communicate via a system bus 603. Also, by reading and executing machine-executable instructions in the machine-readable storage medium 602 corresponding to the traffic forwarding logic, the processor 601 may perform the traffic forwarding methods described above.

The machine-readable storage medium 602 referred to herein may be any electronic, magnetic, optical, or other physical storage device that can contain or store information such as executable instructions, data, and the like. For example, the machine-readable storage medium may be: a RAM (random Access Memory), a volatile Memory, a non-volatile Memory, a flash Memory, a storage drive (e.g., a hard drive), a solid state drive, any type of storage disk (e.g., an optical disk, a dvd, etc.), or similar storage medium, or a combination thereof.

Embodiments of the present invention also provide a machine-readable storage medium, such as the machine-readable storage medium 602 in fig. 6, including machine-executable instructions that are executable by the processor 601 in the traffic forwarding device to implement the traffic forwarding method described above.

The implementation process of the functions and actions of each unit in the above device is specifically described in the implementation process of the corresponding step in the above method, and is not described herein again.

For the device embodiments, since they substantially correspond to the method embodiments, reference may be made to the partial description of the method embodiments for relevant points. The above-described embodiments of the apparatus are merely illustrative, and the units described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and parts displayed 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 modules can be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the scheme of the invention. One of ordinary skill in the art can understand and implement it without inventive effort.

As can be seen from the above embodiments, on one hand, the switch establishes a connection with the MEC through the interface group, sets a drainage rule corresponding to the interface group, and drains the traffic matched with the drainage rule to the MEC. And on the other hand, the switch is connected with the EPC, and further, the switch can send a detection message to the MEC through an outlet interface of the interface group, and determine whether the MEC fails according to whether the detection message is received from the return port within the preset time. And when the detection message is not received from the return port within the preset time, the switch sets the drainage rule corresponding to the interface group to be in an invalid state. Therefore, for the traffic received from the eNodeB side, when there is no target drainage rule in the matched effective state, the switch can directly forward according to the local forwarding table entry, thereby realizing service recovery when the MEC fails under the condition of only deploying a single switch, avoiding traffic interruption caused by the fact that the traffic is drained to the MEC in the failure state, and improving the reliability of networking.

Other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the invention disclosed herein. This application is intended to cover any variations, uses, or adaptations of the invention following, in general, the principles of the invention and including such departures from the present disclosure as come within known or customary practice within the art to which the invention pertains. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with a true scope and spirit of the invention being indicated by the following claims.

It will be understood that the invention is not limited to the precise arrangements described above and shown in the drawings and that various modifications and changes may be made without departing from the scope thereof. The scope of the invention is limited only by the appended claims.

Claims

1. A traffic forwarding method is applied to a switch in a networking deployed with a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), the networking further comprises a base station eNodeB and an Evolved Packet Core (EPC), the switch is connected with the MEC through an interface group, and a connection is established between the switch and the EPC, the method comprises the following steps:

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

3. The method of claim 2, wherein forwarding the traffic according to the target drainage rule comprises:

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein after forwarding the traffic to the MEC through an egress interface in a target interface group corresponding to the target drainage rule, the method further includes:

and when receiving the flow from the return port in the target interface group, forwarding the flow received from the return port in the target interface group according to a local forwarding table entry.

5. The method according to any of claims 1-4, wherein the egress port and the egress port included in the set of interfaces are the same interface.

6. A flow forwarding device is applied to a switch in a networking deployed with a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), the networking further comprises a base station eNodeB and an Evolved Packet Core (EPC), the switch is connected with the MEC through an interface group, and a connection is established between the switch and the EPC, the device comprises:

7. The apparatus of claim 6,

the sending unit is further configured to forward the traffic according to the target drainage rule when the determining unit determines that the target drainage rule of the valid state matching the traffic exists.

8. The apparatus of claim 7,

the sending unit is specifically configured to forward the traffic to the MEC through an output interface in a target interface group corresponding to the target drainage rule if the target drainage rule is a drainage rule corresponding to the interface group.

9. The apparatus of claim 8,

the sending unit is further configured to forward, when the receiving unit receives traffic from the return port in the target interface group, the traffic received from the return port in the target interface group according to a local forwarding table entry.

10. The apparatus according to any one of claims 6-9, wherein the outlet and return ports included in the set of interfaces are the same interface.