Routing in Black Box: Modularized Load Balancing for Multipath Data Center Networks

Abstract

Multipath networks are widely used in data centers and load balancing is one of the most important technologies to improve their performances. Due to the ever-increasing in data center network size, existing load balancing algorithms face the challenges of efficiency and scalability. In this paper, we propose a new load balancing algorithm for large-scale, multi-tier fat-tree based data center networks. Different from the conventional architectures, a multi-tier fat-tree is divided into multiple routing domains according to the topology, and the routing processes in different domains are independent. The devices outside a routing domain can only access the specific interfaces provided by this domain. It is thus very convenient for deployment and modular upgrade. We also design a distributed and data-driven feedback mechanism, with which the routing decision is based on the global load information. We prove that the new algorithm can achieve perfect load balancing in multipath networks and show that the new algorithm outperforms all other load balancing algorithms in performance.