Packet Slicing for Highly Concurrent TCPs in Data Center Networks with COTS Switches

Abstract

Modern data center nowadays leverages highly concurrent TCP connections between thousands of computer servers to achieve high system performance and service reliability. However, recent works have shown that, in the many-to-one and barrier-synchronized communication pattern, a large number of concurrent TCP connections suffer the TCP Incast problem due to packet drops in shallow-buffered Ethernet switches. This problem unavoidably leads to severe under-utilization of link capacity. In this work, we first reveal theoretically and empirically that controlling the IP packet size reduces the Incast probability much more effectively than controlling the congestion windows in the presence of severe congestion. We further present the design and implementation of Packet Slicing, a general supporting scheme that adjusts the packet size through a standard ICMP signaling method. Our method can be deployed on commodity switches with small firmware updates, while making no modification on end hosts. Another highlight of our work is Packet Slicing's broad applicability and effectiveness. We integrate Packet Slicing transparently (i.e., without modification) with three state-of-the-art TCP protocols designed for data centers on NS2 simulation and a physical testbed, respectively. The experimental results show that Packet Slicing remarkably improves network goodput across different TCP protocols by average 26x under severe congestion, while introducing little I/O performance impact on both switches and end hosts.