OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies

The rapid adoption of Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) is setting the stage for the dynamic reconfiguration of the network topology in optical backbones. The conventional approach to enable programmability in the physical layer requires solving a cross-layer optimization formula...

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Main Author: Ghobadi, Manya
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: ACM 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129521
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author Ghobadi, Manya
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Ghobadi, Manya
author_sort Ghobadi, Manya
collection MIT
description The rapid adoption of Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) is setting the stage for the dynamic reconfiguration of the network topology in optical backbones. The conventional approach to enable programmability in the physical layer requires solving a cross-layer optimization formulation that captures the interplay between the IP and optical layers. However, as the network scales, the complexity and run time of cross-layer optimization formulations grow prohibitively, resulting in heuristic-based solutions that sacrifice optimality for scalability. We propose a flow-based graph abstraction, called OptFlow, that is able to find the optimal allocation faster than a cross-layer optimization formulation. The key idea in OptFlow is that topology programmability is abstracted by "network flows," enabling service providers to use multi-commodity flow formulations, such as conventional Traffic Engineering, to solve a cross-layer optimization. OptFlow augments the physical graph and uses it as input to the unmodified flow-based Traffic Engineering algorithm, capturing a variety of IP-layer optimization goals such as max throughput, min hop count, and max-min fairness. Due to its flow-based nature, OptFlowinherently provides an abstraction for consistent network updates. To benchmark our key assumptions in OptFlow, we build a small testbed prototype consisting of four ROADMs. To evaluate the optimality and run time of large networks, we simulate fiveWAN topologies with up to 100 nodes and 390 links. Our results show that OptFlow matches the throughput performance of an optimal cross-layer formulation but has faster computation times. The run time speed-up of OptFlow increases as the network scales, with up to 8× faster execution times in our simulations.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1295212022-10-01T23:52:08Z OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies Ghobadi, Manya Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory The rapid adoption of Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) is setting the stage for the dynamic reconfiguration of the network topology in optical backbones. The conventional approach to enable programmability in the physical layer requires solving a cross-layer optimization formulation that captures the interplay between the IP and optical layers. However, as the network scales, the complexity and run time of cross-layer optimization formulations grow prohibitively, resulting in heuristic-based solutions that sacrifice optimality for scalability. We propose a flow-based graph abstraction, called OptFlow, that is able to find the optimal allocation faster than a cross-layer optimization formulation. The key idea in OptFlow is that topology programmability is abstracted by "network flows," enabling service providers to use multi-commodity flow formulations, such as conventional Traffic Engineering, to solve a cross-layer optimization. OptFlow augments the physical graph and uses it as input to the unmodified flow-based Traffic Engineering algorithm, capturing a variety of IP-layer optimization goals such as max throughput, min hop count, and max-min fairness. Due to its flow-based nature, OptFlowinherently provides an abstraction for consistent network updates. To benchmark our key assumptions in OptFlow, we build a small testbed prototype consisting of four ROADMs. To evaluate the optimality and run time of large networks, we simulate fiveWAN topologies with up to 100 nodes and 390 links. Our results show that OptFlow matches the throughput performance of an optimal cross-layer formulation but has faster computation times. The run time speed-up of OptFlow increases as the network scales, with up to 8× faster execution times in our simulations. European Union. Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Agreement 864228) 2021-01-22T12:58:03Z 2021-01-22T12:58:03Z 2020-03 2020-12-15T16:20:30Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 9781450371018 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129521 Foerster, Klaus-Tycho et al. “OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies.” Paper in the Proceedings of the SOSR 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 Symposium on SDN Research, San Jose, CA, March 3, 2020, ACM: 96–102 © 2020 The Author(s) en 10.1145/3373360.3380840 SOSR 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 Symposium on SDN Research Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf ACM MIT web domain
spellingShingle Ghobadi, Manya
OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies
title OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies
title_full OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies
title_fullStr OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies
title_full_unstemmed OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies
title_short OptFlow: A Flow-based Abstraction for Programmable Topologies
title_sort optflow a flow based abstraction for programmable topologies
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129521
work_keys_str_mv AT ghobadimanya optflowaflowbasedabstractionforprogrammabletopologies