US-12627599-B2 - Service tree for multicast flow visiblity

Abstract

According to one or more embodiments of the disclosure, an example process herein may comprise: causing, responsive to a triggering event, establishment of a service tree that follows a same path as a multicast parent tree through a data communication network to one or more intended recipient devices; causing a duplication of a particular flow from the multicast parent tree to the service tree; causing a determination of a performance characteristic of the particular flow through the service tree; and causing an association of the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree.

Inventors

• Mankamana Prasad Mishra
• Rajiv Asati
• Nitin Kumar
• Krishnaswamy Muddenahally Anathamurthy
• Frank Brockners

Assignees

• CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC.

Dates

Publication Date

20260512

Application Date

20230306

Claims (18)

1. 1 . A method, comprising: establish, by a process and responsive to a triggering event, a service tree that follows a same path as a multicast parent tree through a data communication network to one or more intended recipient devices by triggering construction of a new underlay tree from the one or more intended recipient devices back to a first hop router; duplicate, by the process, a particular flow from the multicast parent tree to the service tree; determine, by the process, a performance characteristic of the particular flow through the service tree; associate, by the process, the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree; and identify a point of failure for the particular flow through the multicast parent tree based on the association of the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree.
2. 2 . The method as in claim 1 , wherein the triggering event comprises an establishment of the multicast parent tree.
3. 3 . The method as in claim 1 , wherein the triggering event comprises a determination that a packet was not received by at least one of a tail end node or a core node of the multicast parent tree.
4. 4 . The method as in claim 1 , wherein the triggering event comprises receiving a network probing request.
5. 5 . The method as in claim 1 , wherein the triggering event comprises a confirmation that the particular flow is received at a head end node of the multicast parent tree.
6. 6 . The method as in claim 1 , further comprising: causing a removal of the service tree from the data communication network upon completion of an examination of the performance characteristic of the particular flow through the service tree.
7. 7 . The method as in claim 1 , wherein the establishment of the service tree is caused by triggering a construction of a new underlay tree from the one or more intended recipient devices back to a head end node.
8. 8 . The method as in claim 1 , wherein the particular flow is selected from among a plurality of flows of the multicast parent tree.
9. 9 . The method as in claim 1 , further comprising: causing the one or more intended recipient devices to join the service tree based on a notification that the particular flow is to be duplicated in the service tree.
10. 10 . An apparatus, comprising: one or more network interfaces; a processor coupled to the one or more network interfaces and configured to execute one or more processes; and a memory configured to store a process that is executable by the processor, the process when executed configured to: establish, responsive to a triggering event, a service tree that follows a same path as a multicast parent tree through a data communication network to one or more intended recipient devices by triggering construction of a new underlay tree from the one or more intended recipient devices back to a first hop router; duplicate a particular flow from the multicast parent tree to the service tree; determine a performance characteristic of the particular flow through the service tree; and associate the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree; and remove the service tree from the data communication network upon completion of an examination of the performance characteristic of the particular flow through the service tree.
11. 11 . The apparatus as in claim 10 , wherein the triggering event comprises an establishment of the multicast parent tree.
12. 12 . The apparatus as in claim 10 , wherein the triggering event comprises a determination that a packet was not received by at least one of a tail end node or a core node of the multicast parent tree.
13. 13 . The apparatus as in claim 10 , wherein the triggering event comprises receiving a network probing request.
14. 14 . The apparatus as in claim 10 , wherein the triggering event comprises a confirmation that the particular flow is received at a head end node of the multicast parent tree.
15. 15 . The apparatus as in claim 10 , wherein the process when executed is further configured to: cause an identification of a point of failure for the particular flow through the multicast parent tree based on the association of the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree.
16. 16 . The apparatus as in claim 10 , wherein the establishment of the service tree is caused by triggering a construction of a new underlay tree from the one or more intended recipient devices back to a head end node.
17. 17 . The apparatus as in claim 10 , wherein the particular flow is selected from among a plurality of flows of the multicast parent tree.
18. 18 . A tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable medium storing program instructions that cause a device to execute a process comprising: establish, by a process and responsive to a triggering event, a service tree that follows a same path as a multicast parent tree through a data communication network to one or more intended recipient devices by triggering construction of a new underlay tree from the one or more intended recipient devices back to a first hop router; duplicate, by the process, a particular flow from the multicast parent tree to the service tree; determine, by the process, a performance characteristic of the particular flow through the service tree; associate, by the process, the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree; and identify a point of failure for the particular flow through the multicast parent tree based on the association of the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD The present disclosure relates generally to computer systems, and, more particularly, to a service tree for multicast flow visibility. BACKGROUND The Internet and the World Wide Web have enabled the proliferation of web services available for virtually all types of businesses. Due to the accompanying complexity of the infrastructure supporting the web services, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the highest level of service performance and user experience to keep up with the increase in web services. One issue negatively impacting service performance and/or user experience can be packet loss. However, identifying a source of packet loss within a network topology can be challenging. This may be especially true with multicast flow communications across service provider networks. In such instances, multiple such flows may be aggregated into a tunnel for communication across a service provider network. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism providing per-flow visibility of the traffic within the tunnel. As a result, even when a packet is discovered to be missing at a last hop router of the tunnel, there is no way to rapidly and precisely determine which node within the network dropped the packet. Therefore, service performance and/or user experience degradations are often allowed to persist for weeks on end as intensive monitoring and brute force efforts are undertaken to identify the failure point by trial and error. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The embodiments herein may be better understood by referring to the following description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which like reference numerals indicate identically or functionally similar elements, of which: FIG. 1 illustrates an example computer network; FIG. 2 illustrates an example computing device/node; FIG. 3 illustrates an example observability intelligence platform; FIG. 4 illustrates an example of a simplified network communication topology for multicast flow communication; FIG. 5 illustrates an example of an operation for constructing a multicast tree for multicast flow communication; FIG. 6. illustrates an example of an operation for aggregating multicast flows; FIG. 7 illustrates an example of a flow visibility for aggregated multicast flows; FIGS. 8A-8E illustrate an example of an operation for utilizing a service tree for multicast flow visibility; and FIG. 9 illustrates an example simplified procedure for utilizing a service tree for multicast flow visibility, in accordance with one or more embodiments described herein. DESCRIPTION OF EXAMPLE EMBODIMENTS Overview According to one or more embodiments of the disclosure, an example process herein may comprise: causing, responsive to a triggering event, establishment of a service tree that follows a same path as a multicast parent tree through a data communication network to one or more intended recipient devices; causing a duplication of a particular flow from the multicast parent tree to the service tree; causing a determination of a performance characteristic of the particular flow through the service tree; and causing an association of the performance characteristic with the multicast parent tree. Other embodiments are described below, and this overview is not meant to limit the scope of the present disclosure. DESCRIPTION A computer network is a geographically distributed collection of nodes interconnected by communication links and segments for transporting data between end nodes, such as personal computers and workstations, or other devices, such as sensors, etc. Many types of networks are available, ranging from local area networks (LANs) to wide area networks (WANs). LANs typically connect the nodes over dedicated private communications links located in the same general physical location, such as a building or campus. WANs, on the other hand, typically connect geographically dispersed nodes over long-distance communications links, such as common carrier telephone lines, optical lightpaths, synchronous optical networks (SONET), synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) links, and others. The Internet is an example of a WAN that connects disparate networks throughout the world, providing global communication between nodes on various networks. Other types of networks, such as field area networks (FANs), neighborhood area networks (NANs), personal area networks (PANs), enterprise networks, etc. may also make up the components of any given computer network. In addition, a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is a kind of wireless ad-hoc network, which is generally considered a self-configuring network of mobile routers (and associated hosts) connected by wireless links, the union of which forms an arbitrary topology. FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram of an example simplified computing system 100 illustratively comprising any number of client devices 102 (e.g., a first through nth client device), one or more servers 104, and one or more databases 106, where