IP Addressing Space Design Issues for Internet Data Centers
Lynne Marchi, Sridhar Mahankali · 2000
The implementation of Public Internet Protocol (IP) address space is a key factor in the size and growth of Internet data centers. IP addressing space decisions affect how many servers can be hosted at a data center, and they influence the kind of network connectivity technology that will be used and even how web sites are implemented. This paper describes IP addressing issues for Internet data centers. First, we provide an overview of Internet addressing and routing: we discuss IP networks, autonomous systems, and high-level Internet network routing. Key Internet constraints are described, particularly the finite amount of IP address space and autonomous systems and the current addressing and routing policies that result from those constraints. We then go over key IP address design decisions. The Internet data center builder needs to decide what address space to use, the size of that address space, the autonomous system number to use, and the address allocation policy to use with customers. These choices are constrained by the difficulty of obtaining space, the required speed of implementation, Internet Service Provider (ISP) routing policies, ISP connectivity decisions, and security requirements. Next, we describe how these design choices affect technology choice and implementation with the data center, by using virtual web site design and Network Address Translation (NAT) as examples. We then provide examples of how address space constraints affect the design of Intel Online Services (IOS) data center address spaces and other technology choices. The last section discusses some trends and future technologies that may alleviate IP address constraints.