Multi-Core Parallel Routing

The recent increase in the amount of data (i.e., big data) led to higher data volumes to be transferred and processed over the network. Also, over the last years, the deployment of multi-core routers has grown rapidly. However, such big data transfers are not leveraging the powerful multi-core routers to the extent possible, particularly in the key function of routing. Our main goal is to find a way so we can use these cores more effectively and efficiently in routing the big data transfers. In this dissertation, we propose a novel approach to parallelize data transfers by leveraging the multi-core CPUs in the routers. Legacy routing protocols, e.g. OSPF for intra-domain routing, send data from source to destination on a shortest single path. We describe an end-to-end method to distribute data optimally on flows by using multiple paths. We generate new virtual topology substrates from the underlying router topology and perform shortest path routing on each substrate. With this framework, even though calculating shortest paths could be done with well-known techniques such as OSPF's Dijkstra implementation, finding optimal substrates so as to maximize the aggregate throughput over multiple end-to-end paths is still an NP-hard problem. We focus our efforts on solving the problem and design heuristics for substrate generation from a given router topology. Our heuristics' interim goal is to generate substrates in such a way that the shortest path between a source-destination pair on each substrate minimally overlaps with each other. Once these substrates are determined, we assign each substrate to a core in routers and employ a multi-path transport protocol, like MPTCP, to perform end-to-end parallel transfers