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An OpenFlow-based performance-oriented multipath forwarding scheme in datacenters

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Abstract

Although dense interconnection datacenter networks (DCNs) (e.g., FatTree) provide multiple paths and high bisection bandwidth for each server pair, the widely used single-path Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and equal-cost multipath (ECMP) transport protocols cannot achieve high resource utilization due to poor resource excavation and allocation. In this paper, we present LESSOR, a performance-oriented multipath forwarding scheme to improve DCNs’ resource utilization. By adopting an OpenFlow-based centralized control mechanism, LESSOR computes near-optimal transmission path and bandwidth provision for each flow according to the global network view while maintaining nearly real-time network view with the performance-oriented flow observing mechanism. Deployments and comprehensive simulations show that LESSOR can efficiently improve the network throughput, which is higher than ECMP by 4.9%–38.3% under different loads. LESSOR also provides 2%–27.7% improvement of throughput compared with Hedera. Besides, LESSOR decreases the average flow completion time significantly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Command Information Systems, PLA University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210007, China

    Bo Liu, Ming Chen, Bo Xu, Hui Hu, Chao Hu & Chang-you Xing

  2. PLA Academy of National Defense Information, Wuhan, 430020, China

    Qing-yun Zuo

Authors
  1. Bo Liu
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  2. Ming Chen
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  3. Bo Xu
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  4. Hui Hu
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  5. Chao Hu
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  6. Qing-yun Zuo
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  7. Chang-you Xing
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bo Xu.

Additional information

Project supported by the National Basic Research Program (973) of China (No. 2012CB315806), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61103225 and 61379149), the Jiangsu Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. BK20140070), and the Jiangsu Future Networks Innovation Institute Prospective Research Project on Future Networks, China (No. BY2013095-1-06)

ORCID: Bo LIU, http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2789-7201

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Liu, B., Chen, M., Xu, B. et al. An OpenFlow-based performance-oriented multipath forwarding scheme in datacenters. Frontiers Inf Technol Electronic Eng 17, 647–660 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1601059

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