中国邮电高校学报(英文)

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Frame-level traffic splitting for link aggregation in data center networks

张鹏1,王洪波1,程时端2,李阳阳1,董健康1   

  1. 1. 北京邮电大学
    2. 北京邮电大学网络与交换技术国家重点实验室
  • 收稿日期:2012-07-05 修回日期:2012-12-20 出版日期:2013-04-30 发布日期:2013-04-26
  • 通讯作者: 张鹏 E-mail:zhp@bupt.edu.cn
  • 基金资助:

    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61002011), the Open Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment (SKLSDE- 2009KF-2-08), the National Basic Research Program of China (2009CB320505), the Hi-Tech Research and Development Program of China (2011AA01A102).

Frame-level traffic splitting for link aggregation in data center networks

  • Received:2012-07-05 Revised:2012-12-20 Online:2013-04-30 Published:2013-04-26
  • Contact: Peng ZHANG E-mail:zhp@bupt.edu.cn
  • Supported by:

    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61002011), the Open Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment (SKLSDE- 2009KF-2-08), the National Basic Research Program of China (2009CB320505), the Hi-Tech Research and Development Program of China (2011AA01A102).

摘要:

Ethernet link aggregation, which provides an easy and cost-effective way to increase both bandwidth and link availability between a pair of devices, is well suited for data center networks. However, all the traffic splitting algorithms used in existing Ethernet link aggregation are flow-level which do not work well owing to the traffic characteristics of data centers. Though frame-level traffic splitting can achieve optimal load balance and the maximum benefits from aggregated capacity, it is generally deprecated in most cases because of frame disordering which can disrupt the operation of many Internet protocols, most notably transmission control protocol (TCP). To address this issue, we first investigate the causes of frame disordering in link aggregation and find that all of them either are no longer true or can be prevented in data centers. Then we present a byte-counter frame-level traffic splitting algorithm which achieves optimal performance while causes no frame disordering. The only requirement is that frames in a flow are the same size which can be easily met in data centers. Simulation results show that the proposed frame-level traffic splitting method could achieve higher throughput and optimal load balance. The average completion time of different sized flows is reduced by 24% on average and by up to 46%.

关键词:

data center networks, Ethernet, link aggregation, frame-level traffic splitting

Abstract:

Ethernet link aggregation, which provides an easy and cost-effective way to increase both bandwidth and link availability between a pair of devices, is well suited for data center networks. However, all the traffic splitting algorithms used in existing Ethernet link aggregation are flow-level which do not work well owing to the traffic characteristics of data centers. Though frame-level traffic splitting can achieve optimal load balance and the maximum benefits from aggregated capacity, it is generally deprecated in most cases because of frame disordering which can disrupt the operation of many Internet protocols, most notably transmission control protocol (TCP). To address this issue, we first investigate the causes of frame disordering in link aggregation and find that all of them either are no longer true or can be prevented in data centers. Then we present a byte-counter frame-level traffic splitting algorithm which achieves optimal performance while causes no frame disordering. The only requirement is that frames in a flow are the same size which can be easily met in data centers. Simulation results show that the proposed frame-level traffic splitting method could achieve higher throughput and optimal load balance. The average completion time of different sized flows is reduced by 24% on average and by up to 46%.

Key words:

data center networks, Ethernet, link aggregation, frame-level traffic splitting