Enabling multipath routing for unicast traffic in Ethernet network

Abstract

We present a system to enable the multipath routing for unicast traffic in Ethernet network that implements Depth First Search algorithm to find all possible path between source and destination Data-Path Identifier (DPID) pairs. The system uses DPID as the locator identifier and Media Access Control (MAC) address as the host identifier, Proxy Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to handle ARP Request packet, and Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) service to allocate Internet Protocol (IP) address subnet. Since we only used an IP address subnet, we preserve the flat addressing structure of the Ethernet, as well as preserve its mobility advantage. The system implements Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm, it is built on POX Controller and uses Openflow Protocol 1.0 as Control Data Plane interface (CDPI). Since it uses Openflow Protocol, we only need to use the Openflow-enabled switch, and do not need to modify the host hardware. We evaluate the system in mesh, grid, clos, and ring topology, as well as analyse the system performance such as memory usage for each host, the latency and packet loss which measured in modified abilene network topology.