research-article

A Tale of Two (Flow) Tables: Demystifying Rule Caching in OpenFlow Switches

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Xin WangAuthors Info & Claims

ICPP '19: Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Parallel Processing

Article No.: 59, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/3337821.3337896

Published: 05 August 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) enables flexible flow control by deploying fine-grained rules in OpenFlow switches. Modern commodity switches usually use TCAM to store these rules and perform high-speed parallel lookups. Though efficient, the TCAM capacity is limited because TCAM is expensive in cost and power-hungry. The explosive growth in the number of rules has exacerbated the limitation of TCAM. There have been considerable efforts in implementing hybrid flow tables with both TCAM and RAM, where the high-speed TCAM is regarded as a cache to store the most popular rules and the cheap RAM is used to handle cache miss. The primary challenges for designing hybrid TCAM/RAM flow tables lie in how to improve cache hit rate and how to handle wildcard rule dependency when allocating rules between TCAM and RAM.

In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of CuCa, a practical and efficient rule caching scheme for hybrid switches. Different from existing schemes, CuCa offers both offline and online algorithms for rule caching, corresponding to the proactive and reactive approaches to OpenFlow rule installation. By designing a two-stage-cache architecture in TCAM, CuCa can handle rule dependency efficiently and provide remarkable performance improvements. Simulation and real-world experiment results reveal that CuCa improves average TCAM hit rate by 38.7% compared to state-of-the-art schemes and by over 33% compared to the default caching algorithm of a commodity OpenFlow switch.

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Cited By

Doron-Arad IKortsarz GNaor JSchieber BShachnai H(2025)Approximations and Hardness of Covering and Packing Partially Ordered ItemsGraph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science10.1007/978-3-031-75409-8_12(166-180)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-75409-8_12
Deng XXu MLi QWu WYang YZhang MZhou YWu J(2024)Exploring Dynamic Rule Caching Under Dependency Constraints for Programmable Switches: Theory, Algorithm, and ImplementationIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2024.342209221:4(4830-4843)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2024.3422092
Isyaku BAbu Bakar KYusuf NAbaker MAbdelmaboud ANagmeldin W(2024)Software Defined Wireless Sensor Load Balancing Routing for Internet of Things Applications: Review of ApproachesHeliyon10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e29965(e29965)Online publication date: Apr-2024
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Index Terms

A Tale of Two (Flow) Tables: Demystifying Rule Caching in OpenFlow Switches
1. Networks
  1. Network architectures
  2. Network performance evaluation
    1. Network performance analysis

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ICPP '19: Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Parallel Processing

August 2019

1107 pages

ISBN:9781450362955

DOI:10.1145/3337821

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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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University of Tsukuba: University of Tsukuba

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 August 2019

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National Natural Science Foundation of China

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ICPP 2019

ICPP 2019: 48th International Conference on Parallel Processing

August 5 - 8, 2019

Kyoto, Japan

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Overall Acceptance Rate 91 of 313 submissions, 29%

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Cited By

Doron-Arad IKortsarz GNaor JSchieber BShachnai H(2025)Approximations and Hardness of Covering and Packing Partially Ordered ItemsGraph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science10.1007/978-3-031-75409-8_12(166-180)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-75409-8_12
Deng XXu MLi QWu WYang YZhang MZhou YWu J(2024)Exploring Dynamic Rule Caching Under Dependency Constraints for Programmable Switches: Theory, Algorithm, and ImplementationIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2024.342209221:4(4830-4843)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2024.3422092
Isyaku BAbu Bakar KYusuf NAbaker MAbdelmaboud ANagmeldin W(2024)Software Defined Wireless Sensor Load Balancing Routing for Internet of Things Applications: Review of ApproachesHeliyon10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e29965(e29965)Online publication date: Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e29965
Wang WYang LYang XWang J(2023)Reducing Flow Table Update Costs in Software-Defined NetworkingSensors10.3390/s2323937523:23(9375)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/s23239375
Afridi SIqbal SQureshi KMajeed SJeon G(2023)Integration of Interdomain Flow-Rule in Software-Defined Networks for Embedded Internet of Things DevicesElectronics10.3390/electronics1205117212:5(1172)Online publication date: 28-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12051172
Ling ZChen XSong L(2023)A Composite Pipeline for Forwarding Low-Latency Traffic in SDN Programmable Data PlanesElectronics10.3390/electronics1202046112:2(461)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2023
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Luan ZLi QZhang ZJiang YChen MWang YLi K(2023)AWEsome-Cache: Dependency-Free Rule-Caching for Arbitrary Wildcard Patterns in TCAM2023 IEEE 31st International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP)10.1109/ICNP59255.2023.10355586(1-12)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNP59255.2023.10355586
Ji HYe RChen ZZhao GZheng W(2023)On-demand Multipath Transmission for Video Streaming Via Cross-layer Collaboration in SDN2023 IEEE 11th International Conference on Information, Communication and Networks (ICICN)10.1109/ICICN59530.2023.10393393(802-807)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2023
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Wang WYang LWang JYang X(2023)Reducing Update Cost of TCAM-Based Flow Table2023 IEEE 6th International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering Technology (CCET)10.1109/CCET59170.2023.10335152(1-5)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2023
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Wang WWang JYang XYang L(2022)Cache Dependent Rules With Size-Limited Flow Table in Software-Defined Networking2022 IEEE Smartworld, Ubiquitous Intelligence & Computing, Scalable Computing & Communications, Digital Twin, Privacy Computing, Metaverse, Autonomous & Trusted Vehicles (SmartWorld/UIC/ScalCom/DigitalTwin/PriComp/Meta)10.1109/SmartWorld-UIC-ATC-ScalCom-DigitalTwin-PriComp-Metaverse56740.2022.00356(1736-1741)Online publication date: Dec-2022
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