Slick packets

Source-controlled routing has been proposed as a way to improve flexibility of future network architectures, as well as simplifying the data plane. However, if a packet specifies its path, this precludes fast local re-routing within the network. We propose SlickPackets, a novel solution that allows packets to slip around failures by specifying alternate paths in their headers, in the form of compactlyencoded directed acyclic graphs. We show that this can be accomplished with reasonably small packet headers for real network topologies, and results in responsiveness to failures that is competitive with past approaches that require much more state within the network. Our approach thus enables fast failure response while preserving the benefits of source-controlled routing. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.2.1 [Network Architecture and Design]: Packetswitching networks; C.2.2 [Network Protocols]: Routing protocols; C.2.6 [Internetworking]: Routers General Terms Algorithms, Design, ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: SIGMETRICS
• Authors: Giang T. K. Nguyen, Rachit Agarwal, Junda Liu, Matthew Caesar, Brighten Godfrey, Scott Shenker
• Keywords: Acyclic Graphs, Hardware, Network Architectures, Network Topologies, SIGMETRICS 2011