Paper Info
Title
PAST: scalable ethernet for data centers
Abstract
We present PAST, a novel network architecture for data center Ethernet networks that implements a Per-Address Spanning Tree routing algorithm. PAST preserves Ethernet's self-configuration and mobility support while increasing its scalability and usable bandwidth. PAST is explicitly designed to accommodate unmodified commodity hosts and Ethernet switch chips. Surprisingly, we find that PAST can achieve performance comparable to or greater than Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) forwarding, which is currently limited to layer-3 IP networks, without any multipath hardware support. In other words, the hardware and firmware changes proposed by emerging standards like TRILL are not required for high-performance, scalable Ethernet networks. We evaluate PAST on Fat Tree, HyperX, and Jellyfish topologies, and show that it is able to capitalize on the advantages each offers. We also describe an OpenFlow-based implementation of PAST in detail.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1145/2413176.2413183
CoNEXT
Keywords
Field
DocType
ethernet switch chip,jellyfish topology,equal-cost multipath,data center,scalable ethernet network,mobility support,per-address spanning tree routing,scalable ethernet,fat tree,openflow-based implementation,multipath hardware support,ethernet network,software defined networking,openflow
Carrier Ethernet,Ethernet flow control,Computer science,Connection-oriented Ethernet,Computer network,ATA over Ethernet,Metro Ethernet,Ethernet over SDH,RDMA over Converged Ethernet,Distributed computing,Synchronous Ethernet
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
82
3.46
24
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Brent Stephens119311.05
Alan Cox2944.43
Wes Felter359852.82
Colin Dixon471040.03
John B. Carter51785162.82