|Publication number||US7349348 B1|
|Application number||US 09/824,553|
|Publication date||Mar 25, 2008|
|Filing date||Apr 2, 2001|
|Priority date||Jan 24, 2000|
|Publication number||09824553, 824553, US 7349348 B1, US 7349348B1, US-B1-7349348, US7349348 B1, US7349348B1|
|Inventors||Kirk Johnson, James O'Toole, M. Frans Kaashoek, John Jannotti|
|Original Assignee||Cisco Technologies, Inc.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (50), Non-Patent Citations (9), Referenced by (26), Classifications (15), Legal Events (3)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/766,874, filed Jan. 19, 2001 now abandoned, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/178,062, filed on Jan. 24, 2000, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Determining a Network Topology in the Presence of Network Address Translation”, by Johnson et al. The entire teachings of the above application is incorporated herein by reference.
Computer networks have provided individuals, corporations, and governments with the means for transferring, sharing, and disseminating large amounts of information and data in digital form. Since the advent of the Internet, data communications has increased in volume and in ways previously unimagined.
An example of data being transferred is real-time video and/or audio. Either media is “packetized,” or converted, from an analog or digital form into a series of data packets that are capable of being transferred across various computer networks. Routers, servers, or other data communication devices are used to effect the data transfer. The media is said to emanate from a host server/computer to one or more client servers/computers.
For instance, a White House press conference occurring in Washington, D.C. may be viewed over the Internet by thousands of viewers watching on client computers or other devices. A single local, White House, host server is generally incapable of supporting all the clients at real-time video rates. Also, bottlenecks may occur at local, Washington D.C. routers supporting the packetized video/audio transfer from the host server to all the clients. To facilitate the high speed video data transfer for real-time video viewing, networks of redundant high-speed servers and routers operating around the Internet have had reasonably good success.
Computer network systems often contain routers, firewalls, proxy servers, and other devices that act to disguise or alter the network addresses of various clients and servers. These devices disguising or altering the network addresses do so in order to enhance the security or performance of the network or, in many cases, to make possible the interoperation of computer networks that use addresses that are incompatible for some reason.
A common scenario is a corporate network containing 100 computers using network addresses 10.0.0.1 through 10.0.0.100, using the TCP/IP network protocols. These numbers are used as “private” network addresses, and the public TCP/IP Internet does not route data packets to these private network addresses. In this scenario, the corporation installs one or more routers, firewalls, network address translators (NATs), proxy servers, or other address translation device (ATD) which are configured such that TCP/IP communications between the computers numbered 10.0.0.1 (and so on) and other computers in the Internet take place using one or more publically routable Internet addresses.
Clients in the private network must go through the address translating device(s) between the private network and the Internet to gain access to the real-time video available on the high-speed server network(s). This means that there may be multiple connections desiring real-time video and/or audio feeds through a single Internet access server, router, or other device. As a result of having this “indirect” access to the high-speed router/server network, the client provides the viewer with the real-time video/audio at non-real-time speeds.
To provide real-time access, a server may be placed behind the address translation device in the private network to receive a single stream of data and then distribute that data to other devices in the private network. Devices within the private network that attempt to access the data through a public server may be directed to the local server in the private network. To be able to direct the data communications to appropriate servers, a model of the network hierarchy is maintained. However, the address translation devices interfere with the ability to identify devices within the hierarchy.
To calculate a model of how routers, firewalls, network-address-translators (NATs), proxy servers, and other address translation devices (ATDs—used in the discussion below to generically indicate any device employing network address translation so as not to specify NATs over proxy servers, etc.) in a network alter the (packet) traffic passing through them, several methods are used to probe the network and infer a model of the network address translation.
To determine a topology of a network induced by network address translation, communications are initiated, from a server behind a translating device, which effect the network address translation. The communications are monitored beyond the translating device to infer partitioning of servers into equivalence sets relative to the network topology induced by the network address translation.
Two types of clients, or devices, may initiate communications: active and passive devices. Active devices include routers, servers, or appliances that may have knowledge of at least one hierarchically superior active device in the hierarchical active device network. Note that an appliance may be equivalence of a server. Passive clients, for example, computers with web browsers, may have no inherent knowledge of the hierarchical server network.
In the communications, an active device may include a respective actual address (i.e., source address) in a message sent to a server outside the subnet, beyond the network address translation device. The actual address may include the sending server's IP address and/or unique identification number, such as the server's ethernet address. The external server beyond the translation device employs a method of distinguishing between communications affected by and not affected by network address translation. To that end, the external server may compare an apparent source address of the received message against the actual address provided in the message by the active device. If those addresses differ, the communication must have passed through an address translation device, and the apparent source address is a translation.
The external server may assess a range of network or subnet addresses behind an address translation device and may assess a range of public network addresses associated with the addresses translating device. In one embodiment, the external server also distinguishes between active and passive client messages. When a passive client communicates to the external server through the address translation device, the external server may respond by sending a redirect command to the passive client, which causes a message to be sent from the passive client to an active client (i.e., server) behind the same address translation device, if there is one. That active client, in turn, communicates with the external server. The communication (the redirect command) from the external server to the passive client may include parameters, thus providing information to the associated active client (server behind the same ATD). The external server may also cause an active client to communicate with another active client behind or beyond the address translation device.
In one embodiment, the external server includes a database which stores translated address sets providing a correspondence between actual client addresses (private addresses) and apparent/translated client addresses (public addresses). A database manager or data structure provides storage, search, and retrieve functions for the stored, translated, address sets. When a communication is received from a client, the external server accesses the translated address sets to compare the apparent message source address with addresses in the translated address sets and to assess whether the source address is behind a known address translation device. Translated address sets may be merged by the external server when it is determined that multiple apparent source addresses in distinct, translated, address sets correspond to the same actual source address.
In one embodiment, if an external server determines that a first apparent address is not already known to be associated with a translated address set but may be associated with a “nearby” translated address set, which is merely a translated address set that includes a second apparent address whose network address is within a predefined metric of the first apparent address, the server applies a timeout mechanism to remove the first apparent address, marked as “speculative,” from the “nearby” translated address set. Marking the first apparent address “speculative” is done because it is sometimes advantageous to retain previously unknown apparent addresses rather than to immediately discard the first apparent address. For example, another communication may enable the external server to change the speculative setting to “non-speculative”. If, however, the first apparent address is determined to belong to a different translated address set or no translated address set at all, the first apparent address may be included in a so-called “excluded” list within translated address sets with which the first apparent address is not associated. Use of the excluded list reduces the likelihood that a client beyond a translating device is constantly redirected to a server behind a translating device, but as a result is never serviced.
To account for a dynamically changing network, the principles of the present invention teach a “soft state” mechanism. The soft state mechanism deletes known translated addresses from the server database of translated address sets after a predefined period of time. Occasionally deleting translated addresses, then recreating them using the techniques described above, refreshes information about the partitioning of servers induced by any ATDs in the network.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of preferred embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which like reference characters refer to the same parts throughout the different views. The drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon illustrating the principles of the invention.
The network 100 includes several subnets 180 a, 180 b, 180 c, and 180 d (collectively 180). The servers 110 have so-called “zones of coverage,” where clients within a first server coverage zone get information from a first server, clients within a second server coverage zone get information from a second server, and so on. The servers 110 are usually configured in a hierarchical arrangement, as discussed in detail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/294,837, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The network 100 may include wire and wireless links, interfaces, and devices. The servers 110 may be routers, computers, computer boards, computer chips, software, hand-held wireless devices or other electronic devices capable of operating the processor routines described herein. The end-users 120 may be computers with browsers, personal communication devices, cell-phones, etc. The ATDs 130 may be network address translation devices, proxies, and firewalls, TCP translators, or other address translation devices.
Proxies operate on the application layer of the standard, seven-layer, ISO, communication protocol stack. An application operating inside the subnet 180 having a proxy server does not have a pretense that it is talking to an outside server. In other words, an application contacts a proxy server to do work on the application's behalf. Since a proxy server typically has a single public address (e.g., devices 130 a, 130 d), a subnet may employ more than one proxy server to perform load balancing and provide multiple public (outbound) addresses.
ATDs operate on the network layer of the standard, seven-layer, ISO, communication protocol stack. An application operating on the subnet 180 behind an ATD thinks it is talking directly to an outside server. ATDs can have more than one public address (e.g., devices 130 b, 130 c), which allows an ATD to use the public (i.e., external, proxy, apparent, perceived, etc.) addresses in a random or pseudo-random manner. In many cases, however, ATDs do not actually randomly use the public addresses; instead, multiple outbound addresses are employed/required to ensure sufficient capacity for the number of network communications that are passing through the ATD.
The devices 110, 120 behind the ATDs 130 communicate with devices 110 h, 150 beyond the ATDs 130 through typical network communication packets. Two such packets are represented by packets 115 a and 115 b (collectively 115). The packets 115 have a header area, which includes network communication protocol information, and message area, which includes substantive device messages.
Packets 115 illustrate the effect of network address translation by the ATDs 130 on the packets 115. Behind the ATD 130 a, packet 115 a header has server B 110 b source address information. Beyond the ATD 130 a, packet 115 b header has public address P1 information. Note, however, that the message areas of both packets 115 a and 115 b have the same server B 110 b source address information, unfettered by the network address translation of ATD 130 a. The servers 110 include their source address information in the message areas for network topology inferencing discussed below.
In the network 100, the CS 150 (or other server 110 used for data distribution purposes) seeks to learn the network addresses of each of the (other) servers 110 in an autonomous manner, or at least network topography relative to ATDs, through the use of a processor routine described in reference to
The present invention is used by servers 110, and possibly other network devices, to determine the network servers of a subset of related network devices. Servers 110 that have information of related network devices may reduce data latency between end-users 120 and the servers 110 in an effort to reduce and/or balance network loading. (See patent application Ser. Nos. 08/779,770, 08/294,837, 09/294,836, and 60/160,535, incorporated herein by reference). By knowing the network addresses of the servers 110, the CS 150, for example, can redirect an end-user 120 browser to an appropriate server 110 behind the end-user's respective ATD. Because the applications for the servers 110 typically include disseminating real-time video and/or voice data, several end-users (e.g., m 120 b, n 120 c) attempting to access data simultaneously from the CS 150, or other hierarchically intermediate server such as server H110 h, cause congestion, thus limiting the effective data flow seen by any one object. However, by redirecting the end-users to appropriate, respective servers, for example servers E 110 e, F 110 f, or G 110 g, the CS 150 or other server (e.g., H 110 h) may issue a single feed of video and/or voice data to the subnet 180 c server for distribution by the server rather than two, three, or more feeds to individual end-users-all through the same ATD. This redirection scheme allows the server network to balance the end-user load. Further, since subnet bandwidth is relatively fast, compared to communication with the Internet 140 via the ATDs 130 or other gateway device, the end-users 120 receive the real-time video and/or voice data at a much higher bandwidth than were each end-user 120 to independently spool the real-time data from the CS 150 or server H 110 h.
The process of inferring network topology occurs on a continual basis each time a client-server 110 or client-end-user 120 requests data from an server not within the client's so-called “coverage zone”. (See application Ser. No. 09/294,837 incorporated herein by reference).
Because computer networks are constantly changing, the present invention optionally provides dynamic monitoring of the clients 110, 120. Network changes may include adding, removing, shutting-off, relocating, crashing, network conflicts—and other such actions that make a network dynamic—which any of the network devices may experience at the hands of network administrators, users, power outages, software viruses, to name a few. To account for a dynamically changing network 100, the processor routines, operating on the CS 150 and/or other servers 110 provide a timeout mechanism, which may be applied to individual translated addresses. Once a timeout is reached, typically ranging from several minutes to several hours, the timed-out translated address is removed from storage. The removed translated address relationship is re-established through the processes discussed in relation to
The server H 110 h or CS 150 storing and monitoring the translated address sets 220 seeks to identify various public addresses determined to be used by the same ATD 130. In this case, ATD 130 a has only a single public address P1, whereas ATD 130 b has two public addresses P2 and P3. Because the address of server C 110 c is determined to be in both translated address sets 220 b and 220 c, the translated address sets P2, P3, 220 b, 220 c, respectively, are merged into a single translated address set 230 a through techniques discussed later.
Further relationships and groupings of translated address sets can be determined empirically. Of special note, however, is translated address set P8, which is a member of translated address sets P4, P7, and possibly over time, P5 and P6 (recall the random public addressing schemes of ATDs discussed above). Translated address set P8 is included in translated address sets P4-P7 because, as can be seen in
In one embodiment, the client address list 210 includes all client addresses. In an alternate embodiment, the client address list 210 includes only server 110 addresses, and end-user 120 addresses are stored in a separate list (not shown and optionally stored in separate translated address sets 220).
In step 450, the routine 340 performs a comparison between the apparent and actual addresses that were determined in steps 430, 440, respectively. If the apparent and actual addresses are the same, then no network address translation is being performed between the message sender and message receiver, which is stated in step 460. If the apparent and actual addresses are not the same, then processing continues in a “determine sender location” routine 340 (
The determine sender location routine 470 begins in step 505, where parameters are passed and local variables are initialized. In step 510, the routine 470 scans the translated address sets for the apparent source address. To get a better understanding of the translated address sets 220 (
The translated address set 220 further includes a field 620, which stores server 110 actual addresses. As illustrated in
Referring again to
The determine sender location routine makes a determination as to whether the apparent source address is a member of another translated address set in step 520. Where step 515 tests a simple case, subnet 180 a, step 520 tests a more difficult case, subnet 180 b or 180 c. If the apparent source address is a member of another translated address set 220, then the two translated address sets are merged in step 522. Step 522 also includes updating the mapping 215 (
If the apparent source address is not a member of another translated address set, then the external server 150, 110 h has not received a communication from the sender. In step 525, the process is not checking for a match, but looking for a “nearby” translated address set. If step 530 does not determine a so-called “nearby” match, then, in step 535, a new, translated, address set is created. The new, translated, address set includes the apparent source address. The new, translated, address set, is associated with the actual source address in the translated address set database 200 (
If step 530 does not determine a so-called “nearby” match, then, in step 535, a new, translated, address set is created. The new, translated, addressed includes the apparent source address. The new, translated, address set is associated with the actual source address in the translated address set database 200 (
“Nearness” may be determined or defined in many different ways. For example, using the IP addressing scheme:
In step 540, the external server 110 h, 150, via the determine sender routine 470, asks the server 110, or active client 120 in some cases, that sent the message to contact a known server 110 behind a respective ATD 130 (e.g., “client 110 c contact server D 110 d”). In step 545, the routine 470 determines whether the contact was successful. If the contact was not successful, then the apparent address (and any extra addresses found from the message communication) is excluded from the translated address set in step 550. The excluded addresses are stored in the excluded translated address list 630 (
Referring again to
If step 720 finds no match, then in step 730, the translated address sets 220 (
If there is a translated address set 220 nearby, then, in step 745, the external server passes “extra” information to the passive client 120 and causes (i.e., redirects) the passive client to contact an active client behind the ATD 130 associated with the nearby translated address set 220. Such “extra” information, for example, in HTTP, includes, at least one extra “CGI” argument (CGI arguments are syntactic parameters), extra “path” information, and/or other URL (uniform resource locator) syntax. The passive client 120 (i.e., so-called “dumb” browser) forwards the received extra information from the so-called “dumb” browser to the more “intelligent” server 110, which, in turn, contacts the server with notice that the internal subnet server did, in fact, receive a message from the passive client, thereby establishing a relationship between the passive client and the subnet server behind the same ATD.
Accordingly, after the extra information is passed to the passive client in step 745, in step 750, the external server tells the passive client to contact the server behind the possible “nearby” ATD 120 with this extra information. Responsively, in the external server translated address set 220, the external server marks the apparent source address as “speculative” in the “nearby” translated address set in step 755, along with a respective timeout. There are at least two options of what to do with the apparent source address upon executing a “speculative redirection” of this sort: (i) immediately exclude the address (possible to have it later removed from the excluded address set and added to the included address set if the speculative redirect is successful), or (ii) speculatively add the address to the included address set with a short timeout. Speculatively adding the address (instead of immediately excluding it) gives rise to a behavioral feature where subsequent clients making requests through the same apparent IP address, after the speculative redirect but before a positive acknowledgment has been received, continue to be re/directed to the server behind the ATD. If one is optimistic and assumes networks are typically set-up such that speculatively adding the address set is the right thing to do, this is an advantage. Of course, if one is pessimistic, it is a disadvantage. In any case, immediately excluding the apparent source address is just a restricted case of a more general scheme in which addresses are added speculatively with a timeout (specifically, immediate exclusion is the degenerate case where the timeout is zero).
In step 760, the external server makes a determination as to whether a positive acknowledgment was received from the subnet server to which the passive client was redirected. If a positive acknowledgment was not received from the respective subnet server, then a timeout exceeded query 765 is performed by the passive client routine 350, which allows additional time for an subnet server to issue an acknowledgment to the external server. If the timeout has not been exceeded, then in step 760, the routine 350 checks again whether a positive acknowledgment has been received. If the timeout has been exceeded, then the routine 350 clears the speculative address in step 770. Following the step of clearing the speculative address in step 770, the apparent address is added to the “excluded” address list 630 (
If, in step 760, the passive client routine 350 determines that a positive acknowledgment has been issued by subnet server associated with the passive client, then “speculative” setting marked with the apparent source address (in step 755) is cleared in step 780. The passive client source address is then added to the translated address set in step 785. Control is returned to the main processor routine 300 in step 790.
The timeout routine 800 begins in step 810, where parameters are passed and local variables are initialized. Step 820 provides a periodic start point at which interrupt driven embodiments begin. In the embodiments shown, a loop, beginning in step 830 is used to scan through each apparent address in order to determine whether that apparent address is still valid or has reached a timeout, whereafter the apparent address should be removed from its respective included and/or excluded translated address list, 610, 630, respectively (
In the loop, step 840 determines whether the apparent address has reached a timeout. If the apparent address has not reached a timeout, then the next apparent address is tested, starting again at step 830. If a timeout for the apparent address being tested has been reached, then the respective translated address set 220 (
Timing out translated address sets by the external server is referred to as a so-called “soft state.” In this case, the mapping 215 (
Using the timeout routine 800, the servers 110 and, more generally the server network, becomes a more tolerant and robust system, accounting for such network changes as adding or removing devices, ATDs, servers, additional subnets, and experiencing power outages. Each such event changes the loading on one or more of the established servers 110, which, through the use of these timeouts, may be brought back on line with a modified coverage area, for example, in the case of additional servers in the hierarchical server network.
It should be understood that the method of the present invention can be implemented by a processor in a server that executes computer instructions, which are stored on a computer readable medium device, such as a ROM, CD ROM, hard disk, or other form of computer storage device.
This application is related to application Ser. No. 08/779,770 filed Jan. 7, 1997 entitled “Replica Routing;” application Ser. No. 09/294,836 filed Apr. 19, 1999 entitled “Self-Organizing Distributed Appliances;” application Ser. No. 09/294,837 filed Apr. 19, 1999 entitled “Replica Routing;” and Provisional Application No. 60/160,535 filed Oct. 20, 1999 entitled “Automatic Network Address Assignment and Translation Inference;” Provisional Application filed Jan. 21, 2000 entitled “Method and Apparatus for a Minimalist Approach to Implementing Server Selection;” and Provisional Application filed on this same day entitled “Method and Apparatus for Automatic Network Address Assignment.” The contents of the above applications are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
While this invention has been particularly shown and described with references 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 spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
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|U.S. Classification||370/254, 709/203, 711/210, 711/202, 370/392|
|International Classification||H04L12/56, G06F15/16|
|Cooperative Classification||H04L61/2503, H04L45/00, H04L29/12339, H04L41/12|
|European Classification||H04L45/00, H04L41/12, H04L61/25A, H04L29/12A4A|
|Aug 10, 2001||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:JOHNSON, KIRK;O TOOLE, JAMES;KAASHOEK, M. FRANS;AND OTHERS;REEL/FRAME:012061/0962;SIGNING DATES FROM 20010612 TO 20010807
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Year of fee payment: 4
|Sep 25, 2015||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 8