Design and Implementation of a Cluster-based Software Router
Norbert Egi, Mihai Dobrescu, Katerina Argyraki, Byung-Gon Chun, Kevin Fall, Gianluca Iannaccone, Allan Knies, Maziar Manesh, Sylvia Ratnasamy · Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) · 2008
Software routers running on general-purpose servers offer significant advantages over specialized high-end network equipment: lower costs due to large-volume manufacturing, a widespread supply/support chain, and, most importantly, programmability and extensibility. The challenge is scaling software-router performance to carrier-level speeds. In this paper, we first study the packet processing capabilities of modern PC servers. We identify performance bottlenecks and suggest ways to overcome them. Based on our findings, we present a cluster-based architecture that uses an interconnect of general-purpose PCs to build software routers that are both scalable and programmable. We prototype a 4-server cluster router and analyze its performance and programmability.