Real-Time In-Band Network Link Loss Detection With Programmable Data Plane

Quality commitment is essential in providing network services and applications to clients. The packet loss in the network, due to link corruption and congestion, causes the performance degradation of many network services, affecting the application experience. Packet loss often happens in both lossy networks like wireless networks and reliable local networks like data center networks. The previous papers proposed methods to estimate the link loss (packet loss on link) and feedback to the controller via the OpenFlow. However, the feedback process passively depends on the scheduled OpenFlow Flow-Stat packet sent from the controller, resulting in late detection and response to the loss events. Besides, the accumulated loss in a path with multiple nodes causes a less accurate estimation at the node far from the measurement host due to insufficient probe packets. Therefore, this paper proposes a new scheme based on programmable data plane-enabled switches, such as the P4-enabled switch, to actively calculate the link loss and send the feedback to the controller. It also ensures the total probe packet at all links always equals the one that departs from the measurement host by supplementing the probe packet to compensate for the loss in the previous link. The simulation on ns-3 shows the efficiency of the proposed scheme in achieving a good accuracy estimation and a short response time to the network state change.