Cost Effective
SDN IXPMarc Bruyere - Christoﬀel Visser
24th Oct 2019 - UCSB

Internet eXchange Point• An Internet exchange points (IXP) are physical locations

through which Internet infrastructure companies such as
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and CDNs connect witheach other• The core service is a Layer2 switching fabric• Layer3 like Route Server are proposed service• Very stable and predictable environment

IXP Costs
Administrative
CommercialEngineering
TechnicalHardware
Infrastructure

IXP domains actions
Member/Customer Domain

Manage Member connection

Cost level to connect a new memberRequest toConnect

Provisioning

Setup

Validation

Maintenance

Admin

Medium

Low

None

None

None

Technical
Human cost

Low to none

MediumHighHigh

Medium to High

PhysicalEquipement

None

Medium to High

Medium

Low to none

Low to none

Cost level to connect a new member
Request toConnect

Provisioning

Setup

Validation

Maintenance

Admin

Medium

Low

None

None

None

Technical
Human cost

Low to none

MediumHighHigh

Medium to High

PhysicalEquipement

None

Medium to High

Medium

Low to none

Low to noneReduction goals
Request toConnect

Provisioning

Setup

Validation

Maintenance

Admin

Medium

Low

None

None

NoneTechnical
Human cost

Low to none

LowLow

Low

Medium to low

PhysicalEquipement

None

Medium to High

Medium

Low to none

Low to none

IXP domains actions
Member/Customer Domain

IXP
IXP
Domain
DomainIXP infrastructure cost level

DesignStagging

Validation
Pre production

Maintenance

Admin

Medium

None

None

None

Technical
Human cost

HighHighHigh

Medium to High

PhysicalEquipement

High

Medium

Low to none

None

IXP infrastructure cost level

DesignStagging

Validation
Pre production

Maintenance

Admin

Medium

None

None

None

Technical
Human cost

HighHighHigh

Medium to High

PhysicalEquipement

High

MediumMediumNoneReduction goals
DesignStagging

Validation
Pre production

Maintenance

Admin

MediumNoneNoneNone

Technical
Human cost

Low

Low

Low

Medium to Low

PhysicalEquipement

Medium to Low

Low

NoneNone

Why the costs are high ?

It's not only about the problem ofconfiguring... the level of complexity innetworks is staggeringConfiguring each element is often done
manually, using arcane low-level, vendorspecific “languages”

A single mistyped line is enoughto bring down the entire network

Complexity + Low-level Management=Problems
AndHigher Cost

How to reduce cost

Full Zero-TouchIXP-Manager | MX-Graph

Full control plane testing

Validation phase with Mininet

Reduce complexity

Umbrella switching fabricConnecting a new member

Provisioning
With IXP-Manager

Generate
FAUCET config

Test control planeWith Mininet

DeployChanging the switching fabric

Provisioning
With IXP-Manager

Visual Diagramming

Generate
FAUCET config

Test control planeWith Mininet

DeployProposed Architecture
IXP Manager

MX Graph

Grafana

Control

Monitoring
FAUCETGAUGE

Umbrella switching fabricAristaCisco

AlliedTelesis

Noviflow

HPE Aruba

Umbrella
CoreP4 - Tofino

IXP-Manager

IXP-Manager• Best practice• Zero Touch provisioning• Advanced Route Server configuration generation• Excellent service to it’s members and IXP operator

Visual Interface to program
the data plane with MXGraph• draw.io Open source core engine MX-Graph Editor• Collect information through the IXP-Manager API• Generate shortest path source routing layer2 encoding• Failure and recovery mechanisms placement

Umbrella switching fabric•No more Broadcast and perfect edge filtering•

Source routing layer2•

No OpenFlow Core switch Management-less•Scale to thousands of hosts - multi Terabits

Core Umbrella• P4 programmed - Tofino ASIC
• No CLI• No Management• Three Steps process:• Check 1st Byte @DST_MAC• Shift 1Byte to the left
• Forward to the port number from the step1 information

DemoWork in progress• 2 IXP migration - TouIX @Toulouse and DIXIE @Tokyo• Small IXP - triangle topology - 10 operators• Failure detection and recovery mechanism placement• IXP-Manager Faucet meta data
• Testing module

Conclusion• Simplified management & No high skills requirement• Zero-Touch Automation & Push-on-green• Multi-vendor & Management-less Core Switch

marc@iij.ad.jp

Encoded neighbordiscovery in the data planerouter-aedge-1

Who has IP-b?
(ﬀ:ﬀ:ﬀ:ﬀ:ﬀ:ﬀ)

IP-b is at mac-b(mac-a)Who has IP-b?
(encoded mac)

IP-b is at mac-b(encoded mac)

Des=na=on broadcast mac
are rewri?en in an
encoded mac

core

edge-3

Who has IP-b?
(encoded mac)

IP-b is at mac-b(encoded mac)router-b

Who has IP-b?
(mac-b)IP-b is at mac-b(mac-a)Core Umbrella
management-less switch• P4 programmed - Tofino ASIC
• No CLI• No Management• Three Steps process:• Check 1st Byte
@DST_MAC• Shift 1Byte to the left
• Forward to the port number
from the step1 information

The FAUCETOpenFlow Controller• FAUCET is a small and production ready OpenFlow controller• Very active community a weekly release• https://github.com/faucetsdn/faucet/releases• Umbrella architecture support• A Single YAML file to control all the domain• FAUCET includes GAUGE a read only monitoring withGrafana dashboards