Leveraging on Source Routing for Scalability and Robustness in Datacenters

The transition towards 5G leads to higher in-network processing demands, which, in turn, raise more severe dataplane requirements, e.g., in terms of datacenter switch forwarding state. Since legacy switches coupled with layer-2/3 forwarding are expected to introduce significant dataplane limitations, we leverage on source routing as means for a more scalable and robust switching fabric, especially for datacenters with large-scale network function deployments. In this respect, we present a practical implementation of source routing using OpenFlow-enabled switches. To assess the gains of source routing in virtualized infrastructures, we perform a comparative study between source routing and L2 forwarding, using our implementation in Mininet. Our evaluation results show significant forwarding state savings and hassle-free network updates, when the proposed source routing scheme is employed.