IP Library › Granted Patent US 11,706,191
Granted Patent B2
US 11,706,191 · App. 17/833,889 · Granted Jul 18, 2023

Link local address assignment for interfaces of overlay distributed router

Inventor: Aviraj Saha (Milpitas, CA)
Assignee: VMWARE, INC.
H04L61/5038H04L45/586H04L2101/622H04L2101/659
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 11,706,191
App. No.
17/833,889
Filed
Jun 6, 2022
Granted
Jul 18, 2023
Kind
B2
Art Unit
2457
USPC
709/245
Abstract

Some embodiments provide a novel method for assigning a unique internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) link-local address to each interface of a software router implementing a plurality of logical interfaces for a corresponding plurality of logical networks. In some embodiments, the method, for each logical interface, determines a logical network identifier for a logical network corresponding to the logical interface and generates the link-local address based on that logical network identifier (e.g., a virtual network identifier (VNI)).

Claims (12)

1. A method of assigning internal link-local IPv6 addresses for logical interfaces of different logical networks that share a same link layer address, the method comprising:

generating a link-local address for a single port of a managed software router using the shared link layer address;

advertising the generated address to machines connected to the logical interfaces through a logical domain;

generating link-local IP addresses for the logical interfaces; and

updating a table to include the link-local IP addresses generated for each logical interface.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the table is a routing table.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the table is used to identify a destination of a data message addressed to the shared link-local address.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein advertising the generated address comprises advertising the address in response to a neighbor solicitation (NS) from a router or other network element.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the NS is part of a neighbor resolution performed by a router or the other network element and includes the generated address in a source address field to be extracted by the router or network element as part of a process for learning IPv6 link-local addresses.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein advertising the generated address comprises using a standard IPv6 advertisement protocol.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the standard IPv6 advertisement protocol is neighbor advertisement.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein said advertisement allows the machines to address the port of the MPRE associated with the link-local address.