A Development of Real-Time Failover Inter-domain Routing Framework Using Software-Defined Networking

Abstract

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) play a crucial role in the interconnection between Internet Service Providers. Consequently, failures in the underlying IXP infrastructure impact the end-user experiences and can potentially translate into a financial loss for participants. Several research groups have attempted to override the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) route selection process in IXP using a software-defined networking (SDN) approach to provide fast failover times, and to control how traffic flows between IXPs. In this research, data plane failures, such as physical disconnections between participant routers and the IXP switch, interrupt traffic flows until the configured BGP hold timer in the IXP route server expires. The objective of this research is to decrease the packets dropped during an IXP data plane failure event. We attempt to decrease the disconnection time between the IXP participants to a value lower than one second, which is the minimum configurable BGP Hold Time. In order to pursue this goal, we have developed a framework that reduces the failover process to the order of milliseconds. The results of the experiments registered an average failover time of 31 ms. As a consequence of improving the failover time, the average packet loss is reduced.