OSN-IX: A Novel Internet eXchange (IX) Architecture based on Overlaid-Star Networks

We propose a novel Internet Exchange (IX) architecture, namely OSN-IX, which adopts an overlaid-star network (OSN) as an IX. OSN can be considered as a "distributed" switch, which combines the advantages of the network and switch. Compared to other IX architectures, e.g., LAN-based IX, MPLS IX, Photonic IX, etc., OSN-IX has good properties of scalability, resilience, and widely distributed access points. Particularly, for the first time, OSN-IX introduces traffic engineering (TE) into the IX world. Based on the TE framework we developed for OSN-IX, OSN-IX can provide optimized dynamic inter-ISP (Internet Service Provider) routing while requiring no change, hardware or software, on existing traditional IP/MPLS routers. We have shown by simulation that our TE framework outperforms several existing inter-AS TE schemes.