OFPT: OpenFlow based Parallel Transport in Datacenters

• Bo Liu,
• Bo XU,
• Chao Hu,
• Hui Hu,
• Ming Chen,

Vol. 10, No. 10, October 30, 2016
10.3837/tiis.2016.10.009, Download Paper (Free):

• Datacenter
• Traffic Engineering
• OpenFlow
• multipath
• Flow completion time

Abstract

Although the dense interconnection datacenter networks (DCNs) (e.g. FatTree) provide multiple paths and high bisection bandwidth for each server pair, the single-path TCP (SPT) and ECMP which are widely used currently neither achieve high bandwidth utilization nor have good load balancing. Due to only one available transmission path, SPT cannot make full use of all available bandwidth, while ECMP’s random hashing results in many collisions. In this paper, we present OFPT, an OpenFlow based Parallel Transport framework, which integrates precise routing and scheduling for better load balancing and higher network throughput. By adopting OpenFlow based centralized control mechanism, OFPT computes the optimal path and bandwidth provision for each flow according to the global network view. To guarantee high throughput, OFPT dynamically schedules flows with Seamless Flow Migration Mechanism (SFMM), which can avoid packet loss in flow rerouting. Finally, we test OFPT on Mininet and implement it in a real testbed. The experimental results show that the average network throughput in OFPT is up to 97.5% of bisection bandwidth, which is higher than ECMP by 36%. Besides, OFPT decreases the average flow completion time (AFCT) and achieves better scalability.

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