Exploring The Benefits of In-Band Service Routing

Current Internet applications use a decade old model to explicitly resolve domain names onto routing identifiers through the Domain Name System (DNS). Service routing postulates an in-band resolution approach, removing the need for explicit discovery. Complemented with routing-based updates of the required service name mappings to routing locators, such an approach promises reduced latency. In this paper, we explore the potential benefits of such an approach. We introduce a taxonomy of communication patterns and key performance indicators (KPIs) for selected use cases, and provide exemplifying insights into the latency promises by combining modelling with prototypical insights for a specific service routing realization named Routing on Service Addresses (ROSA). Our results show, for instance, the potential of lowered latencies, with page retrieval times in web browsing reduced up to 60%.