PACKET TRACING IN DISTRIBUTED NETWORK ARCHITECTURES

In a distributed network architecture, tracking the network function node instances through which a network packet traverses, the time that a packet spends in each of the network functions, and the operations that the functions perform on each packet are extremely important when troubleshooting packet processing issues. However, such distributed architectures often include legacy services which cannot be readily extended (either because of the architecture or because of the programming language used) to include solutions to facilitate the above-described tracing. Techniques are presented herein that support a novel OpenTelemetry-based packet tracing approach that facilitates data plane debugging in a distributed microservices architecture containing heterogenous services without an explicit need for services to integrate with an OpenTelemetry software development kit (SDK). Aspects of the presented techniques encompass the enrichment of log files, a filtering capability, the extension of a Radioactive Tracing-style capability to a microservices world, etc