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FlowTrace: measuring round-trip time and tracing path in software-defined networking with low communication overhead

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Abstract

In today’s networks, load balancing and priority queues in switches are used to support various quality-of-service (QoS) features and provide preferential treatment to certain types of traffic. Traditionally, network operators use ‘traceroute’ and ‘ping’ to troubleshoot load balancing and QoS problems. However, these tools are not supported by the common OpenFlow-based switches in software-defined networking (SDN). In addition, traceroute and ping have potential problems. Because load balancing mechanisms balance flows to different paths, it is impossible for these tools to send a single type of probe packet to find the forwarding paths of flows and measure latencies. Therefore, tracing flows’ real forwarding paths is needed before measuring their latencies, and path tracing and latency measurement should be jointly considered. To this end, FlowTrace is proposed to find arbitrary flow paths and measure flow latencies in OpenFlow networks. FlowTrace collects all flow entries and calculates flow paths according to the collected flow entries. However, polling flow entries from switches will induce high overhead in the control plane of SDN. Therefore, a passive flow table collecting method with zero control plane overhead is proposed to address this problem. After finding flows’ real forwarding paths, FlowTrace uses a new measurement method to measure the latencies of different flows. Results of experiments conducted in Mininet indicate that FlowTrace can correctly find flow paths and accurately measure the latencies of flows in different priority classes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China

    Shuo Wang, Jiao Zhang, Tao Huang, Jiang Liu & Yun-jie Liu

  2. Science and Technology on Information Transmission and Dissemination in Communication Networks Laboratory, Shijiazhuang, 050081, China

    Shuo Wang, Tao Huang & Jiang Liu

  3. Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Internet Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China

    Tao Huang & Yun-jie Liu

  4. Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    F. Richard Yu

Authors
  1. Shuo Wang
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  2. Jiao Zhang
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  3. Tao Huang
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  4. Jiang Liu
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  5. Yun-jie Liu
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  6. F. Richard Yu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shuo Wang.

Additional information

Project supported by the National High-Tech R&D Program (863) of China (No. 2015AA016101), the National Basic Research Program (973) of China (No. 2012CB315801-1), the Beijing Nova Program, China (No. Z151100000315078), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61302089)

ORCID: Shuo WANG, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6350-6362

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Wang, S., Zhang, J., Huang, T. et al. FlowTrace: measuring round-trip time and tracing path in software-defined networking with low communication overhead. Frontiers Inf Technol Electronic Eng 18, 206–219 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1601280

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1601280

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