Stateless Flow-Zone Switching Using Software-Defined Addressing

The trend toward cloudification of communication networks and services, with user data and applications stored and processed in data centers, pushes the limits of current Data Center Networks (DCNs), requiring improved scalability, resiliency, and performance. Here we consider a DCN forwarding approach based on software-defined addressing (SDA), which embeds semantics in the Medium Access Control (MAC) address and thereby enables new forwarding processes. This work presents Flow-Zone Switching (FZS), a loop-free location-based source-routing solution that eliminates the need for forwarding tables by embedding routing instructions and flow identifiers directly in the flow-zone software-defined address. FZS speeds the forwarding process, increasing the throughput and reducing the latency of QoS-sensitive flows while reducing the capital and operational costs of switching. This paper presents details of FZS and a performance evaluation within a complete DCN.