Dynamic and distributed routing control for virtualized local area networks

Advanced Layer-3 (L3) switches achieve high-speed IP packet forwarding by storing parts of the header information from transmitted packets into the flow cache in the switch fabric when relaying the IP packets between subnets. When IP traffic is overloaded on an L3 switch, the flow cache is easily exhausted, decreasing the IP packet forwarding performance. Virtual LAN (VLAN), a virtualization technology at the data-link layer, is widely used for the internal networks of many organizations because it allows network configurations to be changed easily and provides design flexibility. In a VLAN-based local area network with multiple L3 switches, the relaying point for each VLAN can be placed on any of the L3 switches. We developed a new network control scheme called distributed virtual routing, which dynamically controls the packet exchange points for each VLAN to suppress the consumption of flow caches. We describe the basic concept and then evaluate the reduction of the relaying flows through the simulation using the real network data.