CN1780250A - Automatic discovery of network topology - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention discloses a method for automatically discovering network topology, which comprises the steps of: a gateway network element collects routing information in its routing table from each network element in the network through a timing query or a query triggered by a network element going online or offline event , the routing information includes network element identifiers and physical connection information between network elements, and the gateway network element reports the routing information to a network management system. The gateway network element can also collect the routing information in the routing table of each network element in the network in a combination of timing query and query triggered by the online or offline event of the network element. The technical scheme of the invention reduces the load of the network communication channel, has openness, does not require special processing on hardware, and can also discover mixed gateway network elements, thereby ensuring the timeliness and reliability of topology information collection.

Description

An Automatic Discovery Method of Network Topology

technical field

The invention relates to a transmission network, in particular to an automatic discovery method of a network topology.

Background technique

A node in the transmission network topology is called a network element. In the network management system, the network topology needs to be known before the network can be managed on the network management system. When increasing or decreasing network elements in the network, the management method in the prior art is to use the user to manually add nodes on the network management and update the network topology structure. This manual configuration method is both cumbersome and error-prone.

U.S. Patent No. 6,654,802 stipulates that some specific bytes (such as JO) in the SDH overhead are used as the specific bytes automatically discovered by the network element, and at the same time use the idle overhead bytes to transmit the connection between the network element and its adjacent network elements to other network elements state to realize automatic discovery of network elements.

But the disadvantage of this method is that it needs to do special processing on the hardware to extract the specific overhead bytes. At the same time, this method of using specific overhead bytes is only limited to the transmission of SDH/SONET network, so it is not open and flexible. , the mixed gateway NE cannot be discovered.

Another method is to directly send the routing table information of each network element to the network management system through each network element in the network, and the network management system processes the routing table information of all network elements received, so as to obtain the topology of the entire network structure.

But this method has the following disadvantages:

1) The network management system needs to log in to each network element in order to establish a communication channel from each network element to the network management system;

2) The routing table information of the network element contains too much data, and the information is regularly sent to the network management, which increases the load of the entire network communication channel.

Therefore, there are defects in the prior art and need to be improved and developed.

Contents of the invention

The technical problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide a method for automatic discovery of network topology, which overcomes the disadvantage of special processing on the hardware for the extraction of specific overhead bytes when using specific overhead bytes in existing methods, and is only limited to SDH The transmission of /SONET network is not open and cannot be found for mixed gateway network elements; and when the network element directly sends the routing table information of the network element to the network management system, the data volume of the routing table information is too large.

In order to solve the problems of the technologies described above, the present invention adopts the following technical solutions:

A method for automatically discovering network topology, which includes the following steps: a gateway network element collects routing information in its routing table from each network element in the network through regular query or event-triggered query, and reports the routing information to the network management system.

The method described above, wherein the routing information includes network element identifiers and physical connection information of network elements.

The method, wherein: the timing query of the gateway network element includes the following steps:

a1 The gateway network element issues a query command to query the routing information of each network element in the current routing table of the gateway network element;

a2 If the queried routing information changes, update the network topology information in the gateway network element;

a3 reporting the current network topology information to the network management system.

Said method, wherein said event triggering manner includes triggering events of network element going online and going offline.

The method, wherein: the query of the gateway network element triggered by a network element online event includes the following steps:

The gateway network element mentioned in b1 finds that a network element is online;

b2 issues a query command to query the routing information of the network element;

b3 updating the network-wide topology information of the gateway network element according to the reported information;

b4 reports the current network topology information to the network management system.

The method, wherein: the query of the gateway network element triggered by a network element offline event includes the following steps:

The gateway network element mentioned in c1 finds that a network element goes offline;

c2 deleting the network element identifier of the network element in the network topology diagram of the gateway network element and the physical connection information related to the network element;

c3 reports the current network topology information to the network management system.

The method, wherein: if there are multiple gateway network elements in the network, each gateway network element automatically negotiates a master gateway network element, and the master gateway network element is responsible for collecting the routing information of each network element and reporting the network management system.

Said method, wherein: the gateway network element with the smallest or largest network element identification code is selected as the main gateway network element during the automatic negotiation of each gateway network element.

The method described above, wherein: the gateway network element collects the routing information in the routing table of each network element in the network by means of a combination of timing query and query triggered by a network element going online or offline event.

Said method, wherein: said routing information is transmitted through SDH/SONET network, Ethernet or other transmission networks.

Said method, wherein: the communication protocol for setting the information transmission channel between said gateway network element and each network element in the network is OSI protocol, TCP/IP protocol or private protocol.

The method, wherein: the information transmission channel is set as a DCC overhead channel composed of D bytes in SDH overhead bytes.

By adopting the technical solution of the present invention, the load of the network communication channel is reduced due to the less routing information transmitted; since the transmission mode is not limited, it is open, and no special processing is required on the hardware, and the mixed gateway network element can also be found; The timeliness and reliability of topology information collection are guaranteed due to the combination of timing query and query triggered by network element online or offline events to collect the routing information in the routing table of each network element in the network.

Description of drawings

Fig. 1 is the processing flow chart of timing inquiry of gateway network element in the embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 2 is a processing flowchart of the gateway network element when the query is triggered by the network element online event in the embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 3 is a processing flow chart of a gateway network element when a query is triggered by a network element offline event in an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed ways

Below in conjunction with accompanying drawing and embodiment the present invention is described in further detail:

In the transmission network, each network element keeps a routing table, which records the network elements reachable from this network element and a reachable path to other network elements. This provides a prerequisite for the gateway network element to collect the topology information of the entire network. The gateway network element only needs to collect the routing information in its routing table from each network element to obtain the topology structure of the entire network, including the network elements in the network and the physical connection information between network elements.

The information transmission channel between the gateway network element and each network element in the network can be an overhead channel DCC composed of SDH overhead bytes (D bytes), or other forms of communication channels between network elements, such as: Ethernet . The network layer where the gateway network element queries routing information from other network elements and reports routing information to other network elements is the data link layer. The connection information between network elements and the routing information of each network element in the network are transmitted through the It can be obtained by running various communication protocols (OSI, TCP/IP, or various proprietary protocols) on the physical communication channel between elements.

There are two ways for the gateway NE to initiate network topology query: timing query and query triggered by NE online and offline events.

As shown in Figure 1, it is a processing flowchart of the timing query of the gateway network element in the embodiment of the present invention, and the timing query of the gateway network element includes the following steps:

a1 starts querying;

a2 If the query is not finished, execute step a3; otherwise, execute step a7;

a3 select a network element that has not been queried from the current routing table of the gateway network element;

a4 issues a query command to query the routing information of the network element;

a5 If the queried routing information has changed, go to step a6, otherwise go to step a2;

a6 updating the network topology information in the gateway network element, and performing step a2;

a7 reporting the current network topology information to the network management system;

a8 ends the query.

Fig. 2 has introduced the processing flowchart of the gateway network element when the query is triggered by the network element online event in the embodiment of the present invention, including steps:

The gateway network element described in b1 finds that a network element is online, and the network element will generally send a predetermined message to the corresponding gateway network element when the network element goes online. The gateway network element can also actively monitor the network elements in the network at any time to see whether there is a network element online;

b2 issues a query command to query the routing information of the network element;

b3 updating the network-wide topology information of the gateway network element according to the reported information;

b4 reports the current network topology information to the network management system.

Fig. 3 has introduced the processing flowchart of the gateway network element when the query is triggered by the network element offline event in the embodiment of the present invention, including steps:

The gateway network element mentioned in c1 finds that a network element goes offline;

c2 deleting the network element identifier of the network element in the network topology diagram of the gateway network element and the physical connection information related to the network element;

c3 reports the current network topology information to the network management system.

If there are multiple gateway network elements in the network, each gateway network element automatically negotiates to obtain a master gateway network element, and the master gateway network element is responsible for collecting the topology information of each network element and reporting it to the network management system.

During the automatic negotiation of each gateway network element, the gateway network element with the smallest or largest network element identification code is selected as the main gateway network element.

Although the present invention has been illustrated and described with reference to preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the The spirit and scope of the invention are defined by the appended claims.

Claims (12)

1, a kind of automatic discovering method of network topology, it may further comprise the steps: Gateway Network Element is collected routing iinformation in its routing table by inquiry regularly or by mode each network element in network of Event triggered, and described routing iinformation is reported network management system.

2, method according to claim 1 is characterized in that, described routing iinformation comprises the physical connection information between network element ID and network element.

3, method according to claim 2 is characterized in that: the described timing inquiry of described Gateway Network Element may further comprise the steps:

The a1 Gateway Network Element issues querying command, inquires about the routing iinformation of each network element in the current routing table of described Gateway Network Element;

A2 upgrades the network topological information in the described Gateway Network Element if the routing iinformation that inquires changes;

The current network topological information of a3 reports described network management system.

4, method according to claim 1 is characterized in that, described Event triggered mode comprises the trigger event that network element is reached the standard grade and rolled off the production line.

5, method according to claim 4 is characterized in that: the described of described Gateway Network Element be may further comprise the steps by the reach the standard grade inquiry of Event triggered of network element:

The described Gateway Network Element of b1 finds have network element to reach the standard grade;

B2 issues querying command, inquires about the routing iinformation of this network element;

B3 is according to the full mesh topology information of the described Gateway Network Element of information updating that reports;

B4 reports described network management system with current network topological information.

6, method according to claim 4 is characterized in that: the described of described Gateway Network Element be may further comprise the steps by the roll off the production line inquiry of Event triggered of network element:

The described Gateway Network Element of c1 finds have network element to roll off the production line;

C2 deletes in the described Gateway Network Element network element ID of this network element and the physical connection information relevant with this network element among the full mesh topology figure;

C3 reports described network management system with current network topological information.

7, method according to claim 1, it is characterized in that: if having a plurality of Gateway Network Element in the network, then each Gateway Network Element negotiates the primary gateway network element automatically, is responsible for collecting the described routing iinformation of each network element and is reported described network management system by described primary gateway network element.

8, method according to claim 7 is characterized in that: choose the minimum or maximum Gateway Network Element of network element ID sign indicating number when each Gateway Network Element is consulted automatically as described primary gateway network element.

9, according to the arbitrary described method of claim 1 to 8, it is characterized in that: described Gateway Network Element adopts regularly inquiry and collects described routing iinformation in its routing table by network element reach the standard grade or roll off the production line mode each network element in network of Event triggered inquiry and usefulness.

10, method according to claim 9 is characterized in that: described routing iinformation transmits by SDH/SONET net, Ethernet or other transmission network.

11, method according to claim 10 is characterized in that: the communications protocol that the information transfer channel between each network element in described Gateway Network Element and the network is set is osi protocol, ICP/IP protocol or proprietary protocol.

12, method according to claim 11 is characterized in that: the described information transfer channel is set to the DCC expense passage that is made of the D byte in the overhead byte of SDH.

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