KR20150080181A - Network adapter and Network control method using the network adapter - Google Patents

Abstract

Disclosed is a network adapter which transmits a control command between a network controller using a first protocol and a network access switch using a second protocol. The network adapter in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention comprises: a control unit which includes an adaptation rule table in which adaptation rules to be applied to a control message received from the network controller are set; a resource manager which collects at least one of setting information, status information, fault information, and statistical information of the access switch so as to be stored as resource status information by the second protocol and transmits the resource status information to the network controller in response to a request by the first protocol of the network controller; and a command manager which converts a control command, transmitted from the network controller by the first protocol, into the second protocol so as to be sent to the access switch.

Description

[0001] The present invention relates to a network adapter and a network control method using the network adapter,

The present invention relates to a network device and a network control method, and more particularly, to a network control method using a network adapter and a network adapter that can be applied to an access device in a software defined network (SDN) environment.

BACKGROUND ART [0002] With the rapid development of network-related technologies, various services such as voice, data, and image contents have been provided to users through networks. Service Provision Using Network As the content increases, there is a lot of research on the advancement of the network equipment and the control method of the network for processing the surging traffic. Network object virtualization technology, and cloud computing are representative technologies that have been developed and applied to accommodate explosive content.

The hardware-based conventional network structure is limited in effectively handling large volumes of traffic with dynamic changes. In order to solve these problems, there is a growing interest in a technique that can provide structural flexibility to a network. A software defined network (SDN), called a software defined network, is a technology that provides network architectural flexibility by controlling the network with software.

The SDN separates the control plane and the data plane so that the operator of the network is not bound to the detailed configuration information of the network but can adaptively cope with the network situation in real time through the control through the software. However, when the SDN is introduced into the conventional network, it is accompanied by the replacement / change of the conventional network equipment, which is a limitation of the introduction of the SDN.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a network adapter capable of minimizing change / replacement of equipment of a conventional access network when a software defined network is introduced.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a network control method capable of adaptively determining a protocol to be used for transmission of a control message in response to a promptness and reliability request using a network adapter.

According to an aspect of the present invention, a network adapter according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a controller including an adaptation rule table in which an adaptation rule to be applied to a control message received from the network controller is set; Wherein the network controller collects at least one of setting information, status information, fault information, and statistical information as resource status information, and transmits the resource status information to the network controller in response to a request by the first protocol of the network controller And an instruction manager for converting a control command transmitted from the network controller by a manager and a first protocol into a second protocol and transmitting the control command to the access switch.

Wherein the resource manager transfers the resource status information request for requesting real time information to the command manager when the resource status information request by the first protocol requests real time information from the network controller, The resource status information request may be converted into a second protocol and transmitted to the access switch to obtain the resource status information.

The first protocol may be an OpenFlow protocol and the second protocol may be an SNMP or SSH protocol.

The controller may determine an administrator to process the control message by referring to the adaptation rule table.

The adaptation rule table may further include protocol information for converting the control message according to the first protocol.

The adaptation rule may be received from the network controller by the first protocol.

In another aspect of the present invention, a network control method performed by a network adapter that conveys a control command between a network controller using a first protocol and a network access switch using a second protocol according to an embodiment of the present invention Obtaining an adaptation rule table to be applied to a control command received from the network controller, receiving a control message from the network controller,

Determining an administrator to process the control message with reference to the adaptation rule table, and transmitting the control message to the access switch through the second protocol by the determined administrator.

When a software defined network (SDN) is introduced, replacement / change of the conventional access network equipment can be minimized. It is possible to provide a service to which SDN technology is applied in the access network without changing the existing access device through the SDN protocol adaptation according to the SDN control message type. It can adaptively determine the protocol to be used for control message transmission in response to the promptness and reliability requirement, and can combine with SDN to enable path control, resource status and fault status monitoring in the wired access network.

1 schematically shows a structure of a software defined network to which an embodiment of the present invention can be applied.
2 is a block diagram illustrating in greater detail the structure of an SDN adapter in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
3 shows an example of SDN adapter operation according to an embodiment of the present invention.
4 is an example of a command rule table setting that can be applied to the example of FIG.
5 is a flowchart illustrating a network control method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

While the present invention has been described in connection with certain exemplary embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiments, but, on the contrary, is intended to cover various modifications and similarities. It should be understood, however, that the invention is not intended to be limited to the particular embodiments, but includes all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In addition, numerals (e.g., first, second, etc.) used in the description of the present invention are merely an identifier for distinguishing one component from another.

Also, in this specification, when an element is referred to as being "connected" or "connected" with another element, the element may be directly connected or directly connected to the other element, It should be understood that, unless an opposite description is present, it may be connected or connected via another element in the middle.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In order to facilitate a thorough understanding of the present invention, the same reference numerals are used for the same means regardless of the number of the drawings.

1 schematically shows a structure of a software defined network to which an embodiment of the present invention can be applied.

In a wired access network, a terminal is connected to a network through an access device. The access device provides a network connection to the terminal, and traffic generated by the terminal is transmitted to the network via an edge switch. Hereinafter, an access network refers to a wired network in which a terminal accesses a network (backbone network), and refers to a network between a terminal and an edge switch. The edge switch acts as a connection point between the access network and the backbone network.

SDN applications are applications that provide network managers with network virtualization, authentication, statistics, and fault information.

The SDN controller is a control device that centrally controls a software defined network, and performs functions such as environment setting, policy determination, and traffic control for each individual entity of the network under control, and generates and transmits a control message for the control. In the embodiment of the present invention, the SDN controller includes a resource manager for collecting and managing link status, bandwidth, and usage information through a southbound interface, Path Selection Manager that calculates the path and stores it in the database, commands to set or cancel the calculated path, and when setting the path, Provisioning Manager).

The SDN access manager is a control device that controls the access network in accordance with a control command of the SDN controller. The SDN Access Manager includes an SDN adapter that provides SDN protocol path setup / change / revoke commands to access devices or provides functionality to provide protocol conversion between multiple protocols (SNMP / SSH / telnet) used for statistics and fault information collection . The SDN adapter may comprise a resource management unit, an event management unit, and an instruction management unit.

The resource management unit collects and manages the access switch setting, status, fault, and statistical information, and the event management unit monitors and manages the network status and the abnormality of each entity. The command management unit manages environment of the access switch Perform setting function. The configuration of the access switch may include flow management of the access switch, VLAN setting, port setting, and queue setting.

The access device may include a flow control unit, an SNMP transceiver unit, and an SSH-based CLI unit as network equipment for providing network access to the terminal. The flow control unit performs flow control for each subscriber according to the SDN controller setting, and the SNMP transmission / reception unit transmits or receives the status and resource status information of the access device. The SSH-based CLI part has SSH (Secure Shell) r based control command setting function of the access device.

2 is a block diagram illustrating in greater detail the structure of an SDN adapter in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

The SDN adapter acquires an adaptation rule from the SDN controller and generates an adaptation rule table. Acquisition of the adaptation rules table takes place between the SDN controller and the SDN adapter using the protocol used by the SDN controller. For example, openflow, RESTful based communication between SDN controller and SDN adapter can be done.

The SDN adapter determines an appropriate protocol among the protocols provided by existing access devices of the conventional network in response to the control message transmitted from the SDN controller according to the adaptation rule table, maps the protocol to be applied to each control message, Can be stored.

In a more specific embodiment, the control message sent by the SDN controller may be quick response focused or relatively more reliable depending on each desired function.

The SDN adapter according to an embodiment of the present invention can determine a protocol to be adaptively applied according to the nature of the control message received from the SDN controller and convert the control command into a corresponding protocol to transmit the converted control command to the access device.

The resource management unit, the event management unit, and the command management unit of the SDN adapter can operate in cooperation with each other, and a management unit for processing the corresponding control message can be determined according to the characteristics of the control message received from the SDN controller. In one embodiment, the command manager is capable of handling control messages in which real-time performance is important and reliable information is requested. The resource management unit can periodically collect and store resource status data (e.g., access switch settings, status, failure, statistical information). When the SDN controller requests the resource status information, the SDN controller periodically collects and responds based on the managed resource status information, or acquires real-time resource status information through the command management unit and responds to the SDN controller with the resource status.

FIG. 3 shows an example of SDN adapter operation according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 4 shows an example of the command rule table setting applied thereto.

4 illustrates the situation in which the first protocol and the second protocol are used to communicate between the SDN adapter and the access device when the adaptation rule table of FIG. 4 is set, wherein the first protocol and the second protocol are SDN controllers and SDN adapters (Understandable) protocol used by conventional access devices, which is distinct from the SDN protocol (e.g., openflow) used for inter-communications. The first protocol may be an SNMP protocol and the second protocol may be an SSH / telnet protocol.

When a control message is received from the SDN controller, an administrator to process the message is determined according to the adaptation rule table. The manager to be processed converts the control message received from the SDN controller into a set protocol and transmits the control message to the access device. As another example of an implementation, an administrator to process a message and a protocol to be translated may be determined according to an adaptation rules table.

4, when a flow inquiry message is received from the SDN controller, the resource manager of the SDN adapter converts the message into a first protocol and processes the message, If received, the command manager of the SDN adapter converts the message into a second protocol and forwards it to the access device.

The resource manager collects and manages the flow, port, queue status, and data throughput information using the SNMP protocol, and provides the information to the SDN controller using the SDN protocol. The event manager provides status information (between the access device and the SDN controller An error message to be transmitted and received, and an asynchronous message).

5 is a flowchart illustrating a network control method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

The SDN adapter acquires an adaptation rule table from the SDN controller (S110). A protocol (e.g., openflow) may be used to acquire the adaptation rule table. The adaptation rule table can be assigned to an administrator who will process the control command for each control command, and the protocol to be converted by the manager can be designated according to the embodiment. In setting the manager to process the control message, the nature of the control message may be considered as described above. Whether reliability should be prioritized, whether quick response is required, whether real-time information is needed, etc. is an example of an argument to be referred to in the manager to be processed and the protocol to be converted.

Upon receiving a control message from the SDN controller (S120), the SDN adapter determines an administrator to process the control message by referring to the adaptation rule table (S130), and transmits the control message transmitted through the SDN protocol to a protocol (S140) and transmits the changed control message (S150).

Meanwhile, the network control method according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention may be implemented in the form of a program command that can be executed through a variety of means for electronically processing information, and may be recorded in a storage medium. The storage medium may include program instructions, data files, data structures, and the like, alone or in combination.

Program instructions to be recorded on the storage medium may be those specially designed and constructed for the present invention or may be available to those skilled in the art of software. Examples of storage media include magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks and magnetic tape, optical media such as CD-ROMs and DVDs, magneto-optical media such as floptical disks, magneto-optical media and hardware devices specifically configured to store and execute program instructions such as ROM, RAM, flash memory, and the like. The above-mentioned medium may also be a transmission medium such as a light or metal wire, wave guide, etc., including a carrier wave for transmitting a signal designating a program command, a data structure and the like. Examples of program instructions include machine language code such as those produced by a compiler, as well as devices for processing information electronically using an interpreter or the like, for example, a high-level language code that can be executed by a computer.

The hardware devices described above may be configured to operate as one or more software modules to perform the operations of the present invention, and vice versa.

The above-described embodiments include examples of various aspects. While it is not possible to describe every possible combination for expressing various aspects, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that other combinations are possible. Accordingly, it is intended that the invention include all alternatives, modifications and variations that fall within the scope of the following claims.

Claims (10)

A network adapter for communicating control commands between a network controller using a first protocol and a network access switch using a second protocol, the network adapter comprising:
A control unit including an adaptation rule table in which an adaptation rule to be applied to a control message received from the network controller is set;
The method of claim 1, further comprising: collecting at least one of configuration information, status information, fault information, and statistical information of the access switch according to a second protocol and storing the configuration information as resource status information; A resource manager for transmitting information to the network controller; And
And a command manager for converting a control command transmitted from the network controller by a first protocol into a second protocol and transmitting the converted control command to the access switch. The method according to claim 1,
When the resource manager requests real-time information from the network controller to the resource status information request by the first protocol,
Transmitting the resource status information request for requesting real-time information to the command manager,
Wherein the command manager converts the resource status information request into a second protocol and transmits the second protocol to the access switch to obtain the resource status information. The method according to claim 1,
The first protocol is an OpenFlow protocol,
Wherein the second protocol is an SNMP or SSH protocol. The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the controller determines an administrator to process the control message with reference to the adaptation rule table. 5. The method of claim 4,
Wherein the adaptation rule table further includes protocol information for converting the control message by the first protocol. The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the adaptation rule is received from the network controller by the first protocol. A network control method carried out by a network adapter for transmitting a control command between a network controller using a first protocol and a network access switch using a second protocol,
Obtaining an adaptation rule table to be applied to a control command received from the network controller;
Receiving a control message from the network controller;
Determining an administrator to process the control message with reference to the adaptation rule table; And
And transmitting the control message to the access switch via the second protocol by the determined manager. 8. The method of claim 7,
Wherein the manager includes a command manager for converting a real-time control command into a second protocol and transmitting the same to the access switch, and a resource manager for collecting and storing status information from the access switch. 9. The method of claim 8,
Wherein the adaptation rule table includes protocol information for converting the control message by the first protocol. The method according to claim 6,
The first protocol is an OpenFlow protocol,
Wherein the second protocol is an SNMP or SSH protocol.

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