DCnet: Evaluation Of A New Data Center Network Architecture

Data center workloads increasingly rely on low-latency east-west traffic while also being able to dynamically move hosts for load balancing purposes. The expansion of Software-Defined Networking has made reconfiguring networks to accommodate diverse workloads possible and efficient. However, reestablishing communication after host migration can impose a relatively long delay. DCnet is a previously proposed architecture that assigns each host a virtual MAC address so it can move within the data center while retaining its original MAC and IP addresses. This paper evaluates the DCnet approach and compares its performance to traditional SDN reactive forwarding flow rule management. Latency and throughput are evaluated in an emulated environment utilizing Mininet, ONOS, and iPerf software. We show that DCnet matches reactive forwarding latency and steady-state throughput while improving on initial first-ping latency.