NEPHELE: An End-to-End Scalable and Dynamically Reconfigurable Optical Architecture for Application-Aware SDN Cloud Data Centers

Bakopoulos, P.; Christodoulopoulos, K.; Landi, Giada; Aziz, Muzzamil; Zahavi, Eitan; Gallico, Domenico; Pitwon, Richard; Tokas, Konstantinos; Patronas, Ioannis; Capitani, Marco; Spatharakis, Christos; Yiannopoulos, K.; Wang, Kai; Kontodimas, Konstantinos; Lazarou, Ioannis; Wieder, Philipp; Reisis, D.; Varvarigos, Emmanouel; Biancani, Matteo; Avramopoulos, H.

doi:10.1109/mcom.2018.1600804

Cited by 49 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The arrayed waveguide grating (AWG), however, offers greater scalability and can be used in conjunction with fast-switching tunable lasers to provide reconfiguration times in the order of tens of nanoseconds. Such AWG-based architectures have been used previously in DCNs [8]- [10] and more recently, the NEPHELE project [11] has proposed fast AWG-based routers in an optical WDM ring configuration, coupled with a TDMA scheme, to provide an optical data center network capable of interconnecting a large number of ToRs. Free-Space Optics (FSO) technologies have also been proposed to enable thousands of direct optical connections between ToRs (FireFly [12], Pro-jecTor [13]), realizing a single central high-radix space switch as the basis of the optical DCN.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

AgileDCN: An Agile Reconfigurable Optical Data Center Network Architecture

Barry²,

Kilper

et al. 2020

J. Lightwave Technol.

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This paper presents a detailed examination of a novel data center network (DCN) that can satisfy the high capacity and low latency requirements of modern cloud computing applications. This reconfigurable architecture called AgileDCN uses fastswitching optical components with a centralized control function and workload scheduler. By providing a highly flexible optical network fabric between server racks, very high network efficiencies can be achieved even under imbalanced loading patterns. Our simulation results show that, at high (70%) loads, TCP flow completion times in the AgileDCN are significantly lower than in an equivalent electronic leaf-spine network.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

AgileDCN: An Agile Reconfigurable Optical Data Center Network Architecture

Barry²,

Kilper

et al. 2020

J. Lightwave Technol.

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“…The NEPHELE network architecture, featured in [157], has a scalable data plane built on verified commodity photonics technology. The NEPHELE data plane works in the time-division multiple access (TDMA) mode, where each slot is dynamically reserved for one communication on the rack to rack relation.…”

Section: F Support For Various Network Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Data Plane Flexibility and Programmability in Software-Defined Networking

et al. 2019

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Software-defined networking (SDN) attracts the attention of the research community in recent years, as evidenced by a large number of survey and review papers. The architecture of SDN clearly recognizes three planes: application, control, and data plane. The application plane executes network applications; control plane regulates the rules for the entire network based on the requests generated by network applications; and based on the set rules, the controller configures the switches in the data plane. The role of the switch in the data plane is to simply forward packets based on the instructions given by the controller. By analyzing SDN-related research papers, it is observed that research, from the very beginning, is insufficiently focused on the data plane. Therefore, this paper gives a comprehensive overview of the data plane survey with particular emphasis on the problem of programmability and flexibility. The first part of the survey is dedicated to the evaluation of actual data plane architectures through several definitions and aspects of data plane flexibility and programmability. Then, an overview of SDN-related research was presented with the aim of identifying key factors influencing the gradual deviation from the original data plane architectures given with ForCES and OpenFlow specifications, which we called the data plane evolution. By establishing a correlation between the treated problem and the problem-solving approaches, the limitations of ForCES and OpenFlow data plane architectures were identified. Based on identified limitations, a generalization of approaches to addressing the problem of data plane flexibility and programmability is made. By examining generalized approaches, open issues have been identified, establishing the grounds for future research directions proposal.

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“…In our experimental demonstration, the NEPHELE ToR is implemented with a commercial Mellanox switch interconnected with off-the-shelf FPGA boards that perform the extra custom functionalities required, such as packet encapsulation and decapsulation in the NEPHELE slots and control of the optical hardware. More details on the NEPHELE data plane architecture can be found in ref 15 along with network dimensioning studies, whereas a preliminary validation of the ToR and POD switches is presented in ref 16 .…”

Section: Nephele Dcn Architecture and Operationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical datacenter network employing slotted (TDMA) operation for dynamic resource allocation

Bakopoulos

Tokas

Spatharakis

et al. 2018

Optical Interconnects XVIII

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The soaring traffic demands in datacenter networks (DCNs) are outpacing progresses in CMOS technology, challenging the bandwidth and energy scalability of currently established technologies. Optical switching is gaining traction as a promising path for sustaining the explosive growth of DCNs; however, its practical deployment necessitates extensive modifications to the network architecture and operation, tailored to the technological particularities of optical switches (i.e. no buffering, limitations in radix size and speed). European project NEPHELE is developing an optical network infrastructure that leverages optical switching within a software-defined networking (SDN) framework to overcome the bandwidth and energy scaling challenges of datacenter networks. An experimental validation of the NEPHELE data plane is reported based on commercial off-the-shelf optical components controlled by FPGA boards. To facilitate dynamic allocation of the network resources and perform collision-free routing in a lossless network environment, slotted operation is employed (i.e. using time-division multiple-access-TDMA). Error-free operation of the NEPHELE data plane is verified for 200 μs slots in various scenarios that involve communication between Ethernet hosts connected to custom-designed top-of-rack (ToR) switches, located in the same or in different datacenter pods. Control of the slotted data plane is obtained through an SDN framework comprising an OpenDaylight controller with appropriate add-ons. Communication between servers in the optical-ToR is demonstrated with various routing scenarios, concerning communication between hosts located in the same rack or in different racks, within the same or different datacenter pods. Error-free operation is confirmed for all evaluated scenarios, underpinning the feasibility of the NEPHELE architecture.

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NEPHELE: An End-to-End Scalable and Dynamically Reconfigurable Optical Architecture for Application-Aware SDN Cloud Data Centers

Cited by 49 publications

References 11 publications

AgileDCN: An Agile Reconfigurable Optical Data Center Network Architecture

AgileDCN: An Agile Reconfigurable Optical Data Center Network Architecture

A Survey on Data Plane Flexibility and Programmability in Software-Defined Networking

Optical datacenter network employing slotted (TDMA) operation for dynamic resource allocation

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