Luca Cittadini

HAIR: hierarchical architecture for internet routing

In the light of recent interest in re-designing the Internet, we introduce HAIR, a routing architecture that tackles the problem of routing table growth, restricts the visibility of routing updates, and inherently supports traffic engineering, mobility, and multipath. HAIR separates locators from identifiers. The routing and mapping system rely on a hierarchical scheme that leverages the structure of todays Internet. Contrary to proposals such as LISP [7] and shim6 [18], we use a hybrid edge-based approach where only some lightweight functionality is added within the network, while the majority of tasks are performed as close to the end hosts as possible. To evaluate our architecture, we analyze to what extent routing would be simplified if HAIR were deployed in todays Internet. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by presenting a working proof-of-concept implementation.

Evolution of Internet Address Space Deaggregation: Myths and Reality

Internet routing table size growth and BGP update churn are two prominent Internet scaling issues. There is widespread belief in a high and fast growing number of ASs that deaggregate prefixes, e.g., due to multi-homing and for the purpose of traffic engineering. Moreover, researchers often blame specific classes of ASs for generating a disproportionate amount of BGP updates. Our primary objective is to challenge such widespread assumptions (“myths”) and not solely to confirm previous findings. Surprisingly, we find severe discrepancies between existing myths and reality. According to our results, there is no trend towards more aggressive prefix deaggregation or traffic engineering over time. With respect to update dynamics, we observe that deaggregated prefixes generally do not generate a disproportionate number of BGP updates, with respect to their share of the BGP routing table. On the other side, we observe much more widespread traffic engineering in the form of AS path prepending and scoped advertisements compared to previous studies. Overall, our work gives a far more positive picture compared to the alarming discourses typically heard: The impact of “bad guys” on routing table size growth and BGP churn has not changed for the worse in recent years. Rather, it increases at the same pace as the Internet itself.

From Paris to Tokyo: on the suitability of ping to measure latency

Monitoring Internet performance and measuring user quality of experience are drawing increased attention from both research and industry. To match this interest, large-scale measurement infrastructures have been constructed. We believe that this effort must be combined with a critical review and calibrarion of the tools being used to measure performance. In this paper, we analyze the suitability of ping for delay measurement. By performing several experiments on different source and destination pairs, we found cases in which ping gave very poor estimates of delay and jitter as they might be experienced by an application. In those cases, delay was heavily dependent on the flow identifier, even if only one IP path was used. For accurate delay measurement we propose to replace the ping tool with an adaptation of paris-traceroute which supports delay and jitter estimation, without being biased by per-flow network load balancing.

Safe Update of Hybrid SDN Networks

The support for safe network updates, i.e., live modification of device behavior without service disruption, is a critical primitive for current and future networks. Several techniques have been proposed by previous works to implement such a primitive. Unfortunately, existing techniques are not generally applicable to any network architecture, and typically require high overhead (e.g., additional memory) to guarantee strong consistency (i.e., traversal of either initial or final paths, but never a mix of them) during the update. In this paper, we deeply study the problem of computing operational sequences to safely and quickly update arbitrary networks. We characterize cases, for which this computation is easy, and revisit previous algorithmic contributions in the new light of our theoretical findings. We also propose and thoroughly evaluate a generic sequence-computation approach, based on two new algorithms that we combine to overcome limitations of prior proposals. Our approach always finds an operational sequence that provably guarantees strong consistency throughout the update, with very limited overhead. Moreover, it can be applied to update networks running any combination of centralized and distributed control-planes, including different families of IGPs, OpenFlow or other SDN protocols, and hybrid SDN networks. Our approach therefore supports a large set of use cases, ranging from traffic engineering in IGP-only or SDN-only networks to incremental SDN roll-out and advanced requirements (e.g., per-flow path selection or dynamic network function virtualization) in partial SDN deployments.

FLIP the (Flow) table: Fast lightweight policy-preserving SDN updates

We propose FLIP, a new algorithm for SDN network updates that preserve forwarding policies. FLIP builds upon the dualism between replacements and additions of switch flow-table rules. It identifies constraints on rule replacements and additions that independently prevent policy violations from occurring during the update. Moreover, it keeps track of alternative constraints, avoiding the same policy violation. Then, it progressively explores the solution space by swapping constraints with their alternatives, until it reaches a satisfiable set of constraints. Extensive simulations show that FLIP outperforms previous proposals. It achieves a much higher success rate than algorithms based on rule replacements only, and massively reduces the memory overhead with respect to techniques solely relying on rule additions.

On the perspectives opened by right angle crossing drawings

Right Angle Crossing (RAC) drawings are polyline drawings where each crossing forms four right angles. RAC drawings have been introduced because cognitive experiments provided evidence that increasing the number of crossings does not decrease the readability of the drawing if the edges cross at right angles. We investigate to what extent RAC drawings can help in overcoming the limitations of widely adopted planar graph drawing conventions, providing both positive and negative results. First, we prove that there exist acyclic planar digraphs not admitting any straight-line upward RAC drawing and that the corresponding decision problem is NP-hard. Also, we show digraphs whose straight-line upward RAC drawings require exponential area. Second, we study if RAC drawings allow us to draw bounded-degree graphs with lower curve complexity than the one required by more constrained drawing conventions. We prove that every graph with vertex-degree at most 6 (at most 3) admits a RAC drawing with curve complexity 2 (resp. 1) and with quadratic area. Third, we consider a natural non-planar generalization of planar embedded graphs. Here we give bounds for curve complexity and area different from the ones known for planar embeddings.

On the co-existence of distributed and centralized routing control-planes

Network operators can and do deploy multiple routing control-planes, e.g., by running different protocols or instances of the same protocol. With the rise of SDN, multiple control-planes are likely to become even more popular, e.g., to enable hybrid SDN or multi-controller deployments. Unfortunately, previous works do not apply to arbitrary combinations of centralized and distributed control-planes. In this paper, we develop a general theory for coexisting control-planes. We provide a novel, exhaustive classification of existing and future control-planes (e.g., OSPF, EIGRP, and Open-Flow) based on fundamental control-plane properties that we identify. Our properties are general enough to study centralized and distributed control-planes under a common framework. We show that multiple uncoordinated control-planes can cause forwarding anomalies whose type solely depends on the identified properties. To show the wide applicability of our framework, we leverage our theoretical insight to (i) provide sufficient conditions to avoid anomalies, (ii) propose configuration guidelines, and (iii) define a provably-safe procedure for reconfigurations from any (combination of) control-planes to any other. Finally, we discuss prominent consequences of our findings on the deployment of new paradigms (notably, SDN) and previous research works.

Improving network agility with seamless BGP reconfigurations

The network infrastructure of Internet service providers (ISPs) undergoes constant evolution. Whenever new requirements arise (e.g., the deployment of a new Point of Presence or a change in the business relationship with a neighboring ISP), operators need to change the configuration of the network. Due to the complexity of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and the lack of methodologies and tools, maintaining service availability during reconfigurations that involve BGP is a challenge for operators. In this paper, we show that the current best practices to reconfigure BGP do not provide guarantees with respect to traffic disruptions. Then, we study the problem of finding an operational ordering of BGP reconfiguration steps that guarantees no packet loss. Unfortunately, finding such an operational ordering, when it exists, is computationally hard. To enable lossless reconfigurations, we propose a framework that extends current features of carrier-grade routers to run two BGP control planes in parallel. We present a prototype implementation and show the effectiveness of our framework through a case study.

iBGP deceptions: More sessions, fewer routes

Internal BGP (iBGP) is used to distribute interdomain routes within a single ISP. The interaction between iBGP and the underlying IGP can lead to routing and forwarding anomalies. For this reason, several research contributions aimed at defining sufficient conditions to guarantee anomaly-free configurations and providing design guidelines for network operators. In this paper, we show several anomalies caused by defective dissemination of routes in iBGP. We define the dissemination correctness property, which models the ability of routers to learn at least one route to each destination. By distinguishing between dissemination correctness and existing correctness properties, we show counterexamples that invalidate some results in the literature. Further, we prove that deciding whether an iBGP configuration is dissemination correct is computationally intractable. Even worse, determining whether the addition of a single iBGP session can adversely affect dissemination correctness of an iBGP configuration is also computationally intractable. Finally, we provide sufficient conditions that ensure dissemination correctness, and we leverage them to both formulate design guidelines and revisit prior results.

Wheel + ring = reel: the impact of route filtering on the stability of policy routing

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) allows providers to express complex routing policies preserving high degrees of autonomy. However, unrestricted routing policies can adversely impact routing stability. A key concept to understand the interplay between autonomy and expressiveness on one side, and stability on the other side, is safety under filtering, i.e., guaranteed stability under autonomous usage of route filters. BGP route filters are used to selectively advertise specific routes to specific neighbors. In this paper, we provide a characterization of safety under filtering, filling the large gap between previously known necessary and sufficient conditions. Our characterization is based on the absence of a particular kind of dispute wheel, a structure involving circular dependencies among routing preferences. We exploit our result to show that networks admitting multiple stable states are provably unsafe under filtering, and the troublesome portion of the configuration can be pinpointed starting from the stable states alone. This is especially interesting from an operational point of view since networks with multiple stable states actually happen in practice (BGP wedgies). Finally, we show that adding filters to an existing configuration may lead to oscillations even if the configuration is safe under any link failure. Unexpectedly, we find policy configurations where misconfigured filters can do more harm than network faults.