An industrial-scale software defined internet exchange point

Arpit Gupta, Robert MacDavid, Rüdiger Birkner, Marco Canini, Nick Feamster, Jennifer Rexford, Laurent Vanbever

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

69 Scopus citations

Abstract

Software-Defined Internet Exchange Points (SDXes) promise to significantly increase the flexibility and function of interdomain traffic delivery on the Internet. Unfortunately, current SDX designs cannot yet achieve the scale required for large Internet exchange points (IXPs), which can host hundreds of participants exchanging traffic for hundreds of thousands of prefixes. Existing platforms are indeed too slow and inefficient to operate at this scale, typically requiring minutes to compile policies and millions of forwarding rules in the data plane. We motivate, design, and implement iSDX, the first SDX architecture that can operate at the scale of the largest IXPs. We show that iSDX reduces both policy compilation time and forwarding table size by two orders of magnitude compared to current state-of-the-art SDX controllers. Our evaluation against a trace from one of the largest IXPs in the world found that iSDX can compile a realistic set of policies for 500 IXP participants in less than three seconds. Our public release of iSDX, complete with tutorials and documentation, is already spurring early adoption in operational networks.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 13th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2016
PublisherUSENIX Association
Pages1-14
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9781931971294
StatePublished - 2016
Event13th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2016 - Santa Clara, United States
Duration: Mar 16 2016Mar 18 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 13th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2016

Conference

Conference13th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Clara
Period03/16/1603/18/16

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Control and Systems Engineering

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