Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks

Rapid convergence to a desired allocation of network resources to endpoint traffic has been a long-standing challenge for packet-switched networks. The reason for this is that congestion control decisions are distributed across the endpoints, which vary their offered load in response to changes in a...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Perry, Jonathan, Balakrishnan, Hari, Shah, Devavrat
Other Authors: Hari Balakrishnan
Published: 2016
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103920
_version_ 1826202611789856768
author Perry, Jonathan
Balakrishnan, Hari
Shah, Devavrat
author2 Hari Balakrishnan
author_facet Hari Balakrishnan
Perry, Jonathan
Balakrishnan, Hari
Shah, Devavrat
author_sort Perry, Jonathan
collection MIT
description Rapid convergence to a desired allocation of network resources to endpoint traffic has been a long-standing challenge for packet-switched networks. The reason for this is that congestion control decisions are distributed across the endpoints, which vary their offered load in response to changes in application demand and network feedback on a packet-by-packet basis. We propose a different approach for datacenter networks, flowlet control, in which congestion control decisions are made at the granularity of a flowlet, not a packet. With flowlet control, allocations have to change only when flowlets arrive or leave. We have implemented this idea in a system called Flowtune using a centralized allocator that receives flowlet start and end notifications from endpoints. The allocator computes optimal rates using a new, fast method for network utility maximization, and updates endpoint congestion-control parameters. Experiments show that Flowtune outperforms DCTCP, pFabric, sfqCoDel, and XCP on tail packet delays in various settings, converging to optimal rates within a few packets rather than over several RTTs. Our implementation of Flowtune handles 10.4x more throughput per core and scales to 8x more cores than Fastpass, for an 83-fold throughput gain.
first_indexed 2024-09-23T12:11:08Z
id mit-1721.1/103920
institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology
last_indexed 2024-09-23T12:11:08Z
publishDate 2016
record_format dspace
spelling mit-1721.1/1039202019-04-11T11:15:05Z Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks Perry, Jonathan Balakrishnan, Hari Shah, Devavrat Hari Balakrishnan Networks & Mobile Systems Rapid convergence to a desired allocation of network resources to endpoint traffic has been a long-standing challenge for packet-switched networks. The reason for this is that congestion control decisions are distributed across the endpoints, which vary their offered load in response to changes in application demand and network feedback on a packet-by-packet basis. We propose a different approach for datacenter networks, flowlet control, in which congestion control decisions are made at the granularity of a flowlet, not a packet. With flowlet control, allocations have to change only when flowlets arrive or leave. We have implemented this idea in a system called Flowtune using a centralized allocator that receives flowlet start and end notifications from endpoints. The allocator computes optimal rates using a new, fast method for network utility maximization, and updates endpoint congestion-control parameters. Experiments show that Flowtune outperforms DCTCP, pFabric, sfqCoDel, and XCP on tail packet delays in various settings, converging to optimal rates within a few packets rather than over several RTTs. Our implementation of Flowtune handles 10.4x more throughput per core and scales to 8x more cores than Fastpass, for an 83-fold throughput gain. 2016-08-15T20:00:07Z 2016-08-15T20:00:07Z 2016-08-15 2016-08-15T20:00:08Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103920 MIT-CSAIL-TR-2016-011 15 p. application/pdf
spellingShingle Perry, Jonathan
Balakrishnan, Hari
Shah, Devavrat
Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks
title Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks
title_full Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks
title_fullStr Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks
title_full_unstemmed Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks
title_short Flowtune: Flowlet Control for Datacenter Networks
title_sort flowtune flowlet control for datacenter networks
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103920
work_keys_str_mv AT perryjonathan flowtuneflowletcontrolfordatacenternetworks
AT balakrishnanhari flowtuneflowletcontrolfordatacenternetworks
AT shahdevavrat flowtuneflowletcontrolfordatacenternetworks