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Using OpenFlow to provide cut-through switching in MobilityFirst

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Abstract

Mobile devices are expected to become the Internet’s predominant technology. Current protocols such as TCP/IP were not originally designed with mobility as a key consideration, and therefore underperform under challenging mobile and wireless conditions. MobilityFirst, a clean slate architecture proposal, embraces several key concepts centered around secure identifiers that inherently support mobility and trustworthiness as key requirements of the network architecture. This includes a hop-by-hop segmented data transport based on a globally unique identifier. This allows late and dynamic rebinding of end-point addresses to support mobility. While this provides critical gains in wireless segments, some overheads are incurred even in stable segments such as in the core. Bypassing routing-layer decisions in these cases, with lower layer cut-through forwarding, can improve said gains. In this work, we introduce a general bypass capability within the MobilityFirst architecture that provides better performance and enables both individual and aggregate flow-level traffic control. Furthermore, we present an OpenFlow-based proof-of-concept implementation of the bypass function using layer 2 VLAN tagging. We run experiments on the ORBIT and Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) testbeds to evaluate the performance and scalability of the solution. By implementing the bypass functionality, we are able to significantly reduce the number of messages processed by the controller as well as the number of flow rules that need to be pushed into the switches.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. CNS-1040765, CNS-1040735, CNS-0958483, CNS-1345295, CNS-0335244 and CNS-1345277.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68508-0115, USA

    Adrian Lara & Byrav Ramamurthy

  2. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901-8541, USA

    Kiran Nagaraja, Aravind Krishnamoorthy & Dipankar Raychaudhuri

Authors
  1. Adrian Lara
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  2. Byrav Ramamurthy
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  3. Kiran Nagaraja
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  4. Aravind Krishnamoorthy
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  5. Dipankar Raychaudhuri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrian Lara.

Additional information

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunication Systems (ANTS 2013) [1].

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Lara, A., Ramamurthy, B., Nagaraja, K. et al. Using OpenFlow to provide cut-through switching in MobilityFirst. Photon Netw Commun 28, 165–177 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11107-014-0461-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11107-014-0461-3

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