This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

This project addresses the complex networking challenge presented by the emerging cloud computing model. Cloud providers must run a diverse set of client applications, each with potentially different networking demands, on shared data-center facilities. Traditionally, a datacenter network is configured to use the same routing process to choose the "best" route for each flow in a datacenter, regardless of the application. For example, Ethernet frequently performs shortest-path routing along a single spanning tree. Yet data center networks typically exhibit significant redundancy; routing along a single tree leaves many paths unused, sacrificing potential gains in reliability, isolation and performance.

Topology switching moves beyond this one-size-fits-all approach providing an architecture for fine-grained multi-topology networking. It allows applications to create custom routing systems within a data center; they can configure multiple logical topologies that, together, are tailored to their reliability and performance requirements. From a cloud provider's perspective, a topology-switched network increases efficiency by multiplexing potentially hundreds of topologies across the same shared physical network. The PIs are designing a scalable topology-switched routing platform that facilitates the exploration of application interfaces, management challenges, novel routing strategies, and performance benefits of this approach.

Ultimately, the project aims to develop a flexible topology management primitive that improves administrators' ability to effectively manage extremely large datacenter deployments. The research is also analyzing the benefits and costs of multi-topology networking. Additional outcomes of this proposal include a public release of the topology switching platform, enabling academic and industrial feedback and adoption.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
0917339
Program Officer
Thyagarajan Nandagopal
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2009-09-01
Budget End
2012-08-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$400,000
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California San Diego
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
La Jolla
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
92093