MPolKA-INT: Stateless Multipath Source Routing for In-Band Network Telemetry

Abstract

Real-time monitoring and measurement are the basis for most management operations, such as traffic engineering, quality of service assurance, and anomaly detection. Nevertheless, collecting measurements from all network devices with sampling and polling-based methods is not scalable. To tackle this issue, the P4 Language Consortium proposed the In-band Network Telemetry (INT) framework that provides real-time and fine-grain measurements in the data plane using telemetry packets. However, the task of specifying the route taken by a telemetry probe still relays on the traditional routing protocols, which require state changes in routing tables and fail to achieve the required accuracy, coverage and latency. In this context, this article investigates how to combine INT with a source routing method based on the stateless Multipath Polynomial Key-based Architecture (M-PolKA). We implemented this multipath telemetry solution as MPolKA-INT using the P4 language, and the experimental results showed low overhead in the data and control planes with agile and flexible path (re)configuration, since it does not require state changes in the routing tables of the devices in the network core.