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Efficient IP-address lookup with a shared forwarding table for multiple virtual routers

Published: 09 December 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Virtual routers are a promising way to provide network services such as customer-specific routing, policy-based routing, multi-topology routing, and network virtulization. However, the need to support a separate forwarding information base (FIB) for each virtual router leads to memory scaling challenges. In this paper, we present a small, shared data structure and a fast lookup algorithm that capitalize on the commonality of IP prefixes between each FIB. Experiments with real packet traces and routing tables show that our approach achieves much lower memory requirements and considerably faster lookup times. Our prototype implementation in the Click modular router, running both in user space and in the Linux kernel, demonstrates that our data structure and algorithm are an interesting solution for building scalable routers that support virtualization.

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  • (2024)MaP: Increasing node capacity of programmable cloud gatewaysComputer Networks10.1016/j.comnet.2024.110590251(110590)Online publication date: Sep-2024
  • (2020)FISE: A Forwarding Table Structure for Enterprise NetworksIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2019.295142617:2(1181-1196)Online publication date: Jun-2020
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cover image ACM Conferences
CoNEXT '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM CoNEXT Conference
December 2008
526 pages
ISBN:9781605582108
DOI:10.1145/1544012
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 09 December 2008

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Author Tags

  1. IP-address lookup
  2. virtual routers

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Overall Acceptance Rate 198 of 789 submissions, 25%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)QuarkTable: Building Compact Forwarding Tables for Programmable Switches on Public CloudsProceedings of the 8th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking10.1145/3663408.3663415(45-51)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2024
  • (2024)MaP: Increasing node capacity of programmable cloud gatewaysComputer Networks10.1016/j.comnet.2024.110590251(110590)Online publication date: Sep-2024
  • (2020)FISE: A Forwarding Table Structure for Enterprise NetworksIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2019.295142617:2(1181-1196)Online publication date: Jun-2020
  • (2018)Constant IP Lookup With FIB ExplosionIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2018.285357526:4(1821-1836)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018
  • (2018)TCAM-Based IP Address Lookup Using Longest Suffix SplitIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2018.281599926:2(976-989)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2018
  • (2018)Data Inspection in SDN Network2018 13th International Conference on Computer Engineering and Systems (ICCES)10.1109/ICCES.2018.8639202(436-441)Online publication date: Dec-2018
  • (2016)Building Nemo, a system to monitor IP routing and traffic paths in real timeComputer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking10.1016/j.comnet.2015.12.01197:C(1-30)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
  • (2015)Memory-efficient IP lookup using trie merging for scalable virtual routersJournal of Network and Computer Applications10.1016/j.jnca.2014.02.00751:C(47-58)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
  • (2015)Multi-dimensional Forwarding TablesFrontiers in Internet Technologies10.1007/978-3-662-46826-5_6(68-79)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2015
  • (2015)Network Virtualization in Data Centers: A Data Plane PerspectiveHandbook on Data Centers10.1007/978-1-4939-2092-1_10(327-349)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2015
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