Abstract
We present the design and experimental evaluation of an Optical Multicast System for Data Center Networks, a hardware-software system architecture that uniquely integrates passive optical splitters in a hybrid network architecture for faster and simpler delivery of multicast traffic flows. An application-driven control plane manages the integrated optical and electronic switched traffic routing in the data plane layer. The control plane includes a resource allocation algorithm to optimally assign optical splitters to the flows. The hardware architecture is built on a hybrid network with both Electronic Packet Switching (EPS) and Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) networks to aggregate Top-of-Rack switches. The OCS is also the connectivity substrate of splitters to the optical network. The optical multicast system implementation requires only commodity optical components. We built a prototype and developed a simulation environment to evaluate the performance of the system for bulk multicasting. Experimental and numerical results show simultaneous delivery of multicast flows to all receivers with steady throughput. Compared to IP multicast that is the electronic counterpart, optical multicast performs with less protocol complexity and reduced energy consumption. Compared to peer-to-peer multicast methods, it achieves at minimum an order of magnitude higher throughput for flows under 250 MB with significantly less connection overheads. Furthermore, for delivering 20 TB of data containing only 15% multicast flows, it reduces the total delivery energy consumption by 50% and improves latency by 55% compared to a data center with a sole non-blocking EPS network.
Highlights
Traffic in cloud computing data centers has shifted in recent years from predominantly (80%) outbound to mostly (70%) rack-to-rack pattern [1, 2]
It provides similar throughput for delivering multicast flows as IP multicast but i) does not require applying complex configurations on all the switches/routers of the data center to enable IP multicast since multicast trees are directly created by the Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller, ii) has superior energy efficiency since it is built on an Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) network that consumes less energy than an Electronic Packet Switching (EPS) network, iii) is future-proof due to the data rate transparency of the sys
The optical multicast system architecture consists of a 3-layered software component that runs on an SDN controller, and a hardware component built upon an optical circuit switching network
Summary
Traffic in cloud computing data centers has shifted in recent years from predominantly (80%) outbound (north-to-south) to mostly (70%) rack-to-rack (east-to-west) pattern [1, 2]. Datacast [21] introduces an algorithm to calculate multiple edge-disjoint Steiner trees, and distributes data among them Despite these efforts, IP multicast is not supported in the majority of current data center networks and multicast traffic is transmitted either through sequence of unicast transmissions or through application layer solutions such as peer-to-peer methods [22]. Experimental and numerical results show that optical multicast transmits multicast flows simultaneously to all the receivers It provides similar throughput for delivering multicast flows as IP multicast but i) does not require applying complex configurations on all the switches/routers of the data center to enable IP multicast since multicast trees are directly created by the SDN controller, ii) has superior energy efficiency since it is built on an OCS network that consumes less energy than an EPS network, iii) is future-proof due to the data rate transparency of the sys-.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
