Juniper Networks, Inc.
Offloading heartbeat responses message processing to a kernel of a network device

Abstract:

System and method for processing heartbeat messages. A first network device receives heartbeat response messages from two or more of a plurality of network devices. Each heartbeat response message respectively corresponds to one network device of the plurality of network devices. The first network device processes the received heartbeat response messages in kernel space and determines, for each of the plurality of heartbeat response messages, an index value identifying the network device that sent the respective heartbeat response message. The first network device updates heartbeat response message fields in a health check data structure in kernel space based on the generated index values and subsequently processes, in a user space, information received from at least one of the heartbeat response message fields of the health check data structure to obtain health status associated with one or more of the plurality of network devices.