Supercharge me: Boost Router Convergence with SDN

Abstract: Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a promising approach for improving the performance and manageability of future network architectures. However, little work has gone into using SDN to improve the performance and manageability of existing networks without requiring a major overhaul of the existing network infrastructure. In this paper, we show how we can dramatically improve, or supercharge, the performance of existing IP routers by combining them with SDN-enabled equipment in a novel way. More particularly, our supercharged solution substantially reduces the convergence time of an IP router upon link or node failure without inducing any reconfiguration of the IP router itself. Our key insight is to use the SDN controller to precompute backup forwarding entries and immediately activate them upon failure, enabling almost immediate data-plane recovery, while letting the router converge at its typical slow pace. By boosting existing equipment's performance, we not only increase their lifetime but also provide new incentives for network operators to kickstart SDN deployment. We implemented a fully functional "supercharger" and use it to boost the convergence performance of a Cisco Nexus 7k router. Using a FPGA-based traffic generator, we show that our supercharged router systematically converges within ~150ms, a 900x reduction with respect to its normal convergence time under similar conditions.