Rethinking IXPs’ Architecture in the Age of SDN

Abstract

Software Defined Internet eXchange Points (SDXs) are a promising solution to the long-standing limitations and problems of interdomain routing. While proposed SDX architectures have improved the scalability of the control plane, these solutions have ignored the underlying fabric upon which they should be deployed. In this paper, we present Umbrella, a software defined interconnection fabric that complements and enhances those architectures.Umbrella is a switching fabric architecture and management approach that improves the overall robustness, limiting control plane dependency and suitable for the topology of any existing Internet eXchange Point (IXP). We validate Umbrella through a real-world deployment on two production IXPs, TouSIX and NSPIXP-3, and demonstrate its use in practice, sharing our experience of the challenges faced.

A Review of Scalability Issues in Software-Defined Exchange Point (SDX) Approaches: State-of-the-Art

“…The traffic of the broadcasted Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is managed directly within the data plane. The model also reduced resource utilization, cost of management and extended the scalability by performing an encoded path of layer2 [2].…”

“…Most of the studies proposed architectures with the centralized ARP proxy, leading to delay in channel control and failure to all connection approaches such as TCP and BGP. The study implemented Umbrella [2], a mechanism that eliminates the need for location discovery in broadcast packets and renders active ARP-proxy used in earlier SDX designs unnecessary. The Umbrella design follows the complicated mechanism of broadcasting packets, so it needs a simpler and straightforward approach.…”

“…IXP operators provide a layer-2 switching fabric facility, and the participants connect their edge router to IXP fabric. IXPs allows different Internet providers to minimize their transit costs and localize and create paths shorter between the endpoints [2], [3].…”

“…Today's SDN provides the required functionalities to the IXP operators to improve local routing. IXPs become an important place to implement SDN benefits [2]. Software-Defined Exchange Point (SDX) has been proposed to enable flexibility in IXP operators and allow IXP members to manage the service providers' traffic exchange leveraging policies.…”

“…This paper discusses the improvement of scalability of Internet exchange points by exploiting SDN functionalities to enable IXP operators to advance their capabilities and manageability to provide good services into their member networks. This work extensively presents the models and approaches related to the improvement of scalability and performance of IXPs that previous studies proposed like iSDX [7], ENDEAVOUR [4], Umbrella [2], SDIX [6], and COIN [10] to tackle the various challenges of inter-domain routing by deploying SDX. Then we analyze how these approaches are changed the way IXP operators provide the services into different autonomous systems.…”