Scalable and Efficient Link Layer Topology Discovery for Autonomic Networks

Increasingly flexible and dynamic network infrastructures, due to softwarization, virtualization and increasing mobility (5G and 6G networks), challenge network management. To cope with the increasing dynamics and complexity, recent research focuses on autonomic network management solutions that do not require human intervention. However, autonomic network management solutions often require up-to-date topological information during network bootstrapping or to quickly react to dynamic events. Therefore, a fast, efficient, and scalable link-layer topology discovery, providing autonomic network management solutions with topological information in highly dynamic and large-scale networks, is required. This paper introduces KeLLy an efficient, scalable link layer topology discovery algorithm for large-scale networks (evaluated with up to 100 000 nodes). KeLLy is fast, discovering large topologies within a few seconds, guarantees discovery of all nodes and all links while inducing low, predictable overhead by querying only a subset (generally below 4 percent) of nodes. It achieves these properties regardless of the type of underlying topology.