On LID assignment in infiniBand networks

To realize a path in an InfiniBand network, an address, known as Local IDentifier (LID) in the InfiniBand specification, must be assigned to the destination and used in the forwarding tables of intermediate switches to direct the traffic following the path. Hence, path computation in InfiniBand networks has two tasks: (1) computing the paths, and (2) assigning LIDs to destinations (and using the LIDs in the forwarding tables to realize the paths). We will refer to the task of computing paths as routing and the task of assigning LIDs as LID assignment. Existing path computation methods for InfiniBand networks integrate these two tasks in one phase. In this paper, we propose to separate routing and LID assignment into two phases so as to achieve the best performance for both routing and LID assignment. Since the routing component has been extensively studied and is fairly well understood, this paper focuses on LID assignment whose major issue is to minimize the number of LIDs required t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ANCS
• Authors: Wickus Nienaber, Xin Yuan, Zhenhai Duan
• Keywords: ANCS 2007, Computer Networks, Infiniband Networks, LID Assignment, Path Computation