The goal of data center networking is to interconnect

a large number of server machines with low equipment

cost, high and balanced network capacity, and robustness to

link/server faults. It is well understood that, the current practice

where servers are connected by a tree hierarchy of network

switches cannot meet these requirements [8], [9].

In this paper, we explore a new server-interconnection structure.

We observe that the commodity server machines used in

today’s data centers usually come with two built-in Ethernet

ports, one for network connection and the other left for backup

purpose. We believe that, if both ports are actively used in

network connections, we can build a low-cost interconnection

structure without the expensive higher-level large switches. Our

new network design, called FiConn, utilizes both ports and only

the low-end commodity switches to form a scalable and highly

effective structure.

Although the server node degree is only two in this structure,

we have proven that FiConn is highly scalable to encompass

hundreds of thousands of servers with low diameter and high

bisection width. The routing mechanism in FiConn balances

different levels of links. We have further developed a lowoverhead

traffic-aware routing mechanism to improve effective

link utilization based on dynamic traffic state. Simulation results

have demonstrated that the routing mechanisms indeed achieve

high networking throughput.

In  IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking

Publisher  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
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