TraceFlow

Traceflow is a proposed protocol to improve OAM (Operations and Management) of complex Layer 2/Layer 3 networks that may include LAG (Link Aggregation Groups), ECMP (Equal Cost Multipath), and ACLs (Access Control Lists). The clients sends TFRQ (TraceFlow ReQuest) packets towards a destination. The packets include a "flow signature" of the first up to 256 bytes of a packet, as well as other options. Nodes (routers and switches) supporting the protocol send TFRSP (TraceFlow ReSPonse) packets back.

The protocol has been proposed by employees of Force10, a vendor of (mainly 10GE) L2/L3 switches. It is still unclear whether it will see wider adoption.

Note that there is an unrelated GitHub project called rucarrol/traceflow, also called Stockholm traceroute, which is a pure Python implementation of traceroute with multipath support and browser visualization based on vis.js.

References

• Traceflow, A. Viswanathan, S. Krishnamurthy, V. Zinjuvadia, R. Manur, NANOG 43 presentation, June 2008 (PDF)
• TraceFlow, V. Zinjuvadia, R. Manur, S. Krishnamurthy, A. Viswanathan, February 2008, draft-zinjuvadia-traceflow-00.txt (work in progress)
• Operations and Maintenance Next Generation Requirements, S. Amante, A. Atlas, A. Lange, D. McPherson, February 2008, draft-amante-oam-ng-requirements-01.txt (work in progress)

– Main.SimonLeinen - 2008-06-02 – 2020-06-21