Distributed in-band network telemetry

Abstract

Modern-day networks are becoming bigger and more complex as the days go by. Thus, network telemetry plays a critical role in modern networking. One of the approaches has been In-band network telemetry (INT) which relies on the usage of network data packets to collect the data plane state without the need for separate control or data channels. This benefits to provide real-time and accurate network monitoring. The traditional in-band telemetry techniques usually incur significant overheads to the large packet size (INT meta-data) and redundant computation/processing at each switch for the marked packets. To address the limitations of traditional in-band network telemetry, we propose a hierarchically distributed INT that leverages the logically centralized control plane, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), to distribute INT processing and analysis components across multiple switches, providing scalable and efficient network monitoring capabilities.