FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

The present disclosure generally relates to networking. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for automated Maintenance End Point (MEP) creation for Operation, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM).

BACKGROUND OF THE DISCLOSURE

Ethernet requires scalable, reliable, and dynamic mechanisms to support Operation, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) and Traffic Engineering (TE). Standards have been developed in the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the like providing many of the required functions. Specifically, Connectivity Fault Management (CFM) is an Ethernet standard to provide many common OAM functions associated with underlying network transport for services. For example, CFM is defined in IEEE 802.1ag-2007 IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks Virtual Bridged Local Area Networks Amendment 5: Connectivity Fault Management, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference. Also, OAM functions are also defined in ITU-T G.8013/Y.1731 (August 2015) “Operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) functions and mechanisms for Ethernet-based networks,” the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference. Further, the MEF also defines Ethernet OAM in various technical specifications, such as MEF 17 (April 2007) “Service OAM Requirements & Framework,” the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference.

Variously, CFM enables the definition, creation, and operation of Maintenance Domains (MD), Maintenance Associations (MA), Maintenance End Points (MEP), etc. for OAM. There are various techniques to create these entities. However, conventional approaches require a manual configuration of an MD, MA, or MEP. For a MEP, a user has to create the MEP on already provisioned services manually. Of course, this is cumbersome, user interaction which is intense, prone to error or misconfiguration, etc. This is more problematic as the number of MEPs increases such as due to Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) deployed at customer locations or the like.

Commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 9,264,328, issued Feb. 16, 2016, and entitled “Systems and methods for dynamic operations, administration, and management,” and commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 9,203,549, issued Dec. 1, 2015, and entitled “Systems and methods for operational simplification of carrier Ethernet networks,” the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference, describe an approach where information is conveyed from one already created MEP to the other end, such as via a new Type-Length-Value (TLV) field. This approach provides auto-creation of a MEP using a TLV where attributes of the MEP is encoded in the TLV and signaled to the remote end which creates the MEP by decoding the TLV.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE DISCLOSURE

It would be advantageous to provide a technique for automated MEP creation which did not rely on newly added fields such as the TLV as such techniques could be used across different vendor's equipment and/or VNFs.

In an embodiment, a method of automatically creating and operating a Maintenance End Point (MEP) includes, at a slave/reactive network device, receiving an Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) Protocol Data Unit (PDU) with a destination Media Access Control (MAC) address equal to an interface address of the slave/reactive network device; automatically creating the MEP based on the received OAM PDU and attributes contained in a header of the OAM PDU, wherein the MEP is with a master/active network device; and operating an OAM session with the master/active network device including exchanging Continuity Check Messages (CCMs) with an interval learned from received CCMs from the master/active network device. The method can further include automatically deleting the MEP responsive to failing to receive a subsequent OAM PDU from the master/active network device during the operating for a predetermined time. The received OAM PDU can be a unicast CCM message from the master/active network device. The automatically creating the MEP can include creating a DOWN MEP if a received interface the OAM PDU is received on is the same as the interface address; and creating a UP MEP if the received interface is different from the interface address and learning an address associated with the OADM PDU.

The method can further include continuously monitoring the interval on received CCMs from the master/active network device; and adjusting configuration of the OAM session with respect to the CCMs based on a determined change in the interval. The attributes can include a plurality of Maintenance Association Identifier (MAID), MEP Identifier, Maintenance Domain (MD) level, and the interval. The method can further include prior to the receiving, obtaining a list of trusted source MAC addresses associated with the master/active network device; and performing the automatically creating only if a source MAC address of the OAM PDU is in the list of trusted source MAC addresses. The slave/reactive network device is a Virtual Network Function (VNF) that operates in a sideline configuration where only OAM PDUs are processed therein, and the method can further include utilizing tags received from a Network Operating System (NOS) for the automatically creating and the operating.

In another embodiment, a network element includes one or more interfaces connected to a network; a switch configured to switch packets between the one or more interfaces; and a controller communicatively coupled to the one or more interfaces and the switch, wherein, responsive to receiving an Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) Protocol Data Unit (PDU) with a destination Media Access Control (MAC) address equal to an interface address of the one or more interfaces, a Maintenance End Point (MEP) is automatically created based on the received OAM PDU and attributes contained in a header of the OAM PDU, the network device is a slave/reactive network device and the MEP is with a master/active network device, and wherein an OAM session is operated with the master/active network device through an exchange of Continuity Check Messages (CCMs) with an interval learned from received CCMs from the master/active network device. The MEP can be automatically deleted responsive to a failure to receive any OAM PDUs from the master/active network device for a predetermined time. The received OAM PDU can be a unicast CCM message from the master/active network device.

The MEP can be one of a DOWN MEP if a received interface the OAM PDU is received on is the same as the interface address; and a UP MEP if the received interface is different from the interface address and an address associated with the OADM PDU is learned. The interval on received CCMs from the master/active network device can be continuously monitored, and wherein a configuration of the OAM session can be adjusted with respect to the CCMs based on a determined change in the interval. Prior to the receiving of the OAM PDU, a list of trusted source MAC addresses associated with the master/active network device can be obtained, and wherein the MEP can be automatically created only if a source MAC address of the OAM PDU is in the list of trusted source MAC addresses.

In a further embodiment, a processing device executing a Virtual Network Function (VNF) includes a network interface and a processor communicatively coupled to one another; and memory storing instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to receive an Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) Protocol Data Unit (PDU) with a destination Media Access Control (MAC) address equal to an interface address of the VNF which is a slave/reactive network device; automatically create a Maintenance End Point (MEP) based on the received OAM PDU and attributes contained in a header of the OAM PDU, wherein the MEP is with a master/active network device; and operate an OAM session with the master/active network device including exchanging Continuity Check Messages (CCMs) with an interval learned from received CCMs from the master/active network device. The memory storing instructions that, when executed, can further cause the processor to automatically delete the MEP responsive to failing to receive any OAM PDUs from the master/active network device during the operating for a predetermined time.

The received OAM PDU can be a unicast CCM message from the master/active network device. The MEP can be one of a DOWN MEP if a received interface the OAM PDU is received on is the same as the interface address; and a UP MEP if the received interface is different from the interface address and an address associated with the OADM PDU is learned. The memory storing instructions that, when executed, can further cause the processor to continuously monitor the interval on received CCMs from the master/active network device, and adjust configuration of the OAM session with respect to the CCMs based on a determined change in the interval. The memory storing instructions that, when executed, can further cause the processor to, prior to the reception of the OAM PDU, obtain a list of trusted source MAC addresses associated with the master/active network device; and automatically create the MEP only if a source MAC address of the OAM PDU is in the list of trusted source MAC addresses.

