Convergencia de tecnologías ópticas y Ethernet en LAN, MAN y SAN: nuevas arquitecturas, análisis de prestaciones y eficiencia energética

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThe development of Information Technologies in the last decades, especially the last two, together with the introduction of computing devices to the mainstream consumer market, has had the logical consequence of the generalisation of the Internet access. The explosive development of the smartphone market has brought ubiquity to that generalisation, to the point that social interaction, content sharing and content production happens all the time. Social networks have all but increased that trend, maximising the diffusion of multimedia content: images, audio and video, which require high network capacities to be enjoyed quickly. This need for endless bandwidth and speed in information sharing brings challenges that affect mainly optical Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs). Furthermore, the wide spreading of Ethernet technologies has also brought the possibility to achieve economies of scale by either extending the reach of Ethernet Local Area Networks (LANs) to the MAN and WAN environment or even integrating them with Storage Area Networks (SANs). Finally, this generalisation of telecommunication technologies in every day life has as a consequence an important rise in energy consumption as well. Because of this, providing energy efficient strategies in networking is key to ensure the scalability of the whole Internet. In this thesis, the main technologies in all the fields mentioned above are reviewed, its core challenges identified and several contributions beyond the state of the art are suggested to improve today’s MANs andWANs. In the first contribution of this thesism, the integration between Metro Ethernet and Wavelength Division Multiplexion (WDM) optical transparent rings is explored by proposing an adaptation architecture to provide efficient broadcast and multicast. The second contribution explores the fusion between transparent WDM and OCDMA architectures to simplify medium access in a ring. Regarding SANs, the third contribution explores the challenges in SANs through the problems of Fibre Channel over Ethernet due to buffer design issues. In this contribution, analysis, design and validation with FCoE traces and simulation is provided to calculate buffer overflow probabilities in the absence of flow control mechanisms taking into account the bursty nature of SAN traffic. Finally, the fourth and last contribution addresses the problems of energy efficiency in Plastic Optical Fibres (POF), a new kind of optical fibre more suitable for transmission in vehicles and for home networking. This contribution suggests two packet coalescing strategies to further improve the energy effiency mechanisms in POFs.El desarrollo de las Tecnologías de la Información en las últimas décadas, especialmente las últimas dos, junto con la introducción de dispositivos informáticos al mercado de masas, ha tenido como consecuencia lógica la generalización del acceso a Internet. El explosivo desarrollo del mercado de teléfonos inteligentes ha añadido un factor de ubicuidad a tal generalización, al extremo de que la interacción social, la compartición y producción de contenidos sucede a cada instante. Las redes sociales no han hecho sino incrementar tal tendencia, maximizando la difusión de contenido multimedia: imágenes, audio y vídeo, los cuales requieren gran capacidad en las redes para poder obtenerse con rapidez. Esta necesidad de ancho de banda ilimitado y velocidad en la compartición de información trae consigo retos que afectan principalmente a las Redes de Área Metropolitana (Metropolitan Area Networks, MANs) y Redes de Área Extensa (Wide Area Networks, WANs). Además, la gran difusión de las tecnologías Ethernet ha traído la posibilidad de alcanzar economías de escala bien extendiendo el alcance de Ethernet más allá de las Redes de Área Local (Local Area Networks, LANs) al entorno de las MAN y las WAN o incluso integrándolas con Redes de Almacenamiento (Storage Area Networks, SANs). Finalmente, esta generalización de las tecnologías de la comunicación en la vida cotidiana tiene también como consecuencia un importante aumento en el consumo de energía. Por tanto, desarrollar estrategias de transmisión en red eficientes energéticamente es clave para asegurar la escalabilidad de Internet. En esta tesis, las principales tecnologías de todos los campos mencionados arriba serán estudiadas, sus más importantes retos identificados y se sugieren varias contribuciones más allá del actual estado del arte para mejorar las actuales MANs y WANs. En la primera contribución de esta tesis, se explora la integración entre Metro Ethernet y anillos ópticos transparentes por Multiplexión en Longitud de Onda (Wavelength Division Multiplex, WDM) mediante la proposición de una arquitectura de adaptación para permitir la difusión y multidifusión eficiente. La segunda contribución explora la fusión entre las arquitecturas transparentes WDM y arquitecturas por Accesso Dividido Múltiple por Códigos Ópticos (OCDMA) para simplificar el acceso en una red en anillo. En lo referente a las SANs, la tercera contribución explora los retos en SANs a través de los problemas de Fibre Channel sobre Ethernet debido a los problemas en el diseño de búferes. En esta contribución, se provee un análisis, diseño y validación con trazas FCoE para calcular las probabilidades de desbordamiento de buffer en ausencia de mecanismos de control de flujo teniendo en cuenta la naturaleza rafagosa del tráfico de SAN. Finalmente, la cuarta y última contribución aborda los problemas de eficiencia energética en Fibras Ópticas Plásticas (POF), una nueva variedad de fibra óptica más adecuada para la transmisión en vehículos y para entornos de red caseros. Esta contribución sugiere dos estrategias de agrupamiento de paquetes para mejorar los mecanismos de eficiencia energética en POFs.Programa Oficial de Posgrado en Ingeniería TelemáticaPresidente: Luca Valcarenghi.- Secretario: Ignacio Soto Campos.- Vocal: Bas Huiszoo

Fairness in a data center

Existing data centers utilize several networking technologies in order to handle the performance requirements of different workloads. Maintaining diverse networking technologies increases complexity and is not cost effective. This results in the current trend to converge all traffic into a single networking fabric. Ethernet is both cost-effective and ubiquitous, and as such it has been chosen as the technology of choice for the converged fabric. However, traditional Ethernet does not satisfy the needs of all traffic workloads, for the most part, due to its lossy nature and, therefore, has to be enhanced to allow for full convergence. The resulting technology, Data Center Bridging (DCB), is a new set of standards defined by the IEEE to make Ethernet lossless even in the presence of congestion. As with any new networking technology, it is critical to analyze how the different protocols within DCB interact with each other as well as how each protocol interacts with existing technologies in other layers of the protocol stack. This dissertation presents two novel schemes that address critical issues in DCB networks: fairness with respect to packet lengths and fairness with respect to flow control and bandwidth utilization. The Deficit Round Robin with Adaptive Weight Control (DRR-AWC) algorithm actively monitors the incoming streams and adjusts the scheduling weights of the outbound port. The algorithm was implemented on a real DCB switch and shown to increase fairness for traffic consisting of mixed-length packets. Targeted Priority-based Flow Control (TPFC) provides a hop-by-hop flow control mechanism that restricts the flow of aggressor streams while allowing victim streams to continue unimpeded. Two variants of the targeting mechanism within TPFC are presented and their performance evaluated through simulation

Study on the Performance of TCP over 10Gbps High Speed Networks

Internet traffic is expected to grow phenomenally over the next five to ten years. To cope with such large traffic volumes, high-speed networks are expected to scale to capacities of terabits-per-second and beyond. Increasing the role of optics for packet forwarding and transmission inside the high-speed networks seems to be the most promising way to accomplish this capacity scaling. Unfortunately, unlike electronic memory, it remains a formidable challenge to build even a few dozen packets of integrated all-optical buffers. On the other hand, many high-speed networks depend on the TCP/IP protocol for reliability which is typically implemented in software and is sensitive to buffer size. For example, TCP requires a buffer size of bandwidth delay product in switches/routers to maintain nearly 100\% link utilization. Otherwise, the performance will be much downgraded. But such large buffer will challenge hardware design and power consumption, and will generate queuing delay and jitter which again cause problems. Therefore, improve TCP performance over tiny buffered high-speed networks is a top priority. This dissertation studies the TCP performance in 10Gbps high-speed networks. First, a 10Gbps reconfigurable optical networking testbed is developed as a research environment. Second, a 10Gbps traffic sniffing tool is developed for measuring and analyzing TCP performance. New expressions for evaluating TCP loss synchronization are presented by carefully examining the congestion events of TCP. Based on observation, two basic reasons that cause performance problems are studied. We find that minimize TCP loss synchronization and reduce flow burstiness impact are critical keys to improve TCP performance in tiny buffered networks. Finally, we present a new TCP protocol called Multi-Channel TCP and a new congestion control algorithm called Desynchronized Multi-Channel TCP (DMCTCP). Our algorithm implementation takes advantage of a potential parallelism from the Multi-Path TCP in Linux. Over an emulated 10Gbps network ruled by routers with only a few dozen packets of buffers, our experimental results confirm that bottleneck link utilization can be much better improved by DMCTCP than by many other TCP variants. Our study is a new step towards the deployment of optical packet switching/routing networks

RDMA over Commodity Ethernet at Scale

ABSTRACT Over the past one and half years, we have been using RDMA over commodity Ethernet (RoCEv2) to support some of Microsoft's highly-reliable, latency-sensitive services. This paper describes the challenges we encountered during the process and the solutions we devised to address them. In order to scale RoCEv2 beyond VLAN, we have designed a DSCP-based priority flow-control (PFC) mechanism to ensure large-scale deployment. We have addressed the safety challenges brought by PFCinduced deadlock (yes, it happened!), RDMA transport livelock, and the NIC PFC pause frame storm problem. We have also built the monitoring and management systems to make sure RDMA works as expected. Our experiences show that the safety and scalability issues of running RoCEv2 at scale can all be addressed, and RDMA can replace TCP for intra data center communications and achieve low latency, low CPU overhead, and high throughput

Study of TCP Issues over Wireless and Implementation of iSCSI over Wireless for Storage Area Networks

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has proved to be proficient in classical wired networks, presenting an ability to acclimatize to modern, high-speed networks and present new scenarios for which it was not formerly designed. Wireless access to the Internet requires that information reliability be reserved while data is transmitted over the radio channel. Automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes and TCP techniques are often used for error-control at the link layer and at the transport layer, respectively. TCP/IP is becoming a communication standard [1]. Initially it was designed to present reliable transmission over IP protocol operating principally in wired networks. Wireless networks are becoming more ubiquitous and we have witnessed an exceptional growth in heterogeneous networks. This report considers the problem of supporting TCP, the Internet data transport protocol, over a lossy wireless link whose features vary over time. Experimental results from a wireless test bed in a research laboratory are reported

Lossless Ethernet and its applications

Ethernet network is the most widely used transport network in access and data-center networks. Ethernet-based networks provide several advantages such as i) low-cost equipment, ii) sharing existing infrastructure, as well as iii) the ease in the Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM). However, Ethernet network is a best-effort network which raises significant issues regarding packet loss and throughput. In this research, we investigate the possibility of achieving lossless Ethernet while keeping network switches unchanged. We present three lossless Ethernet applications namely i) switch fabric for routers, ii) lossless data center fabric, and iii) zero-jitter fronthaul network for Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) over Ethernet for 5th Generation Mobile Networks (5G) network. Switch fabric in routers requires stringent characteristics in term of packet loss, fairness, no head-of-line blocking and low latency. We propose a novel concept to control and prevent congestion in switch fabrics to achieve scalable, flexible, and more cost-efficient router fabric while using commodity Ethernet switches. On the other hand, data center applications require strict characteristics regarding packet loss, fairness, head-of-line blocking, latency, and low processing overhead. Therefore, we present a congestion control for data center networks. Our proposal is designed to achieve minimum queue length and latency while guaranteeing fairness between flows of different rates, packet sizes and Round-trip Times (RTTs). Besides, Using Ethernet as a transport network for fronthaul in 5G networks draws significant attention of both academia and industry due to i) the low cost of equipment, ii) sharing existing infrastructure, as well as iii) the ease of operations, administration and maintenance (OAM). Therefore, we introduce a distributed scheduling algorithm to support CPRI traffic over Ethernet. The results obtained through testbed implementations and simulations show that Lossless Ethernet is feasible and could achieve minimum queue length, latency, and jitter while preventing Head Of Line (HOL) blocking