US 11,750,476 B2
Service operation chaining
Sami Boutros, Union City, CA (US); Pere Monclus, Union City, CA (US); Philip Kippen, Fall City, WA (US); Dharma Rajan, North Miami Beach, FL (US); and Yashika Narang, Sunnyvale, CA (US)
Assigned to NICIRA, INC., Palo Alto, CA (US)
Filed by Nicira, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US)
Filed on Oct. 9, 2020, as Appl. No. 17/67,635.
Application 17/067,635 is a continuation of application No. 15/881,670, filed on Jan. 26, 2018, granted, now 10,805,181.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/578,507, filed on Oct. 29, 2017.
Prior Publication US 2021/0044502 A1, Feb. 11, 2021
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. H04L 41/5041 (2022.01); H04L 67/1014 (2022.01); H04L 47/2483 (2022.01); H04L 47/2408 (2022.01); H04L 45/00 (2022.01); H04L 9/40 (2022.01); H04L 67/10 (2022.01); H04L 43/028 (2022.01); H04L 12/46 (2006.01); G06F 9/455 (2018.01); H04L 69/22 (2022.01)
CPC H04L 41/5041 (2013.01) [H04L 12/4633 (2013.01); H04L 43/028 (2013.01); H04L 45/00 (2013.01); H04L 47/2408 (2013.01); H04L 47/2483 (2013.01); H04L 67/1014 (2013.01); G06F 2009/45595 (2013.01); H04L 63/0209 (2013.01); H04L 63/123 (2013.01); H04L 67/10 (2013.01); H04L 69/22 (2013.01); H04L 2212/00 (2013.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. In a multi-tenant network, a method of specifying service operations for a data message associated with a particular machine of a particular tenant, the method comprising:
in a Geneve (Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation) tunnel header for encapsulating the data message, storing a tenant identifier identifying the particular tenant and a plurality of service identifiers associated with a plurality of service machines for performing a plurality of service operations on the data message, the plurality of service identifiers stored in a variable sized option field of the tunnel header that allows different number of service machines to be specified for performing different numbers of service operations for different data message flows; and
forwarding the data message encapsulated with the tunnel header along a tunnel to a first service machine to perform a first service operation identified by the plurality of service identifiers,
wherein the Geneve tunnel header is placed outside of layers 2 and 3 headers of the data message.