From Packets to XLFrames: Sand and Rocks for Transfer of Mice and Elephants

Looking into the future, this paper presents the effects of having packets of large sizes, called XLFrames (XLFs), in a network. The analysis is motivated by the fact that the Internet is soon to witness stupendous amounts of traffic that have to be processed and switched at amplifying line rates; and this brings forth multiple challenges in the form of energy efficiency, network performance and end-host performance. Increasing the size of packets in the Internet has far-reaching incentives that otherwise appear hard to achieve. We foresee an Internet that multiplexes both packets (sand) and XLFs (rocks). As a first step, we analyse the effects of introducing XLFs in a network, and find the following: (i) the amount of packet-header processing is greatly reduced, (ii) while the fair multiplexing of XLFs with standard packets can be achieved using a careful queue management in routers.