The software switches and routers are rapidly developed in the NFV/SDN area, and are expected to be adopted in the emerging future mobile network (beyond-5G). Despite the high expectation of software routers, its latency characteristics have not been investigated extensively. To provide the reference latency value for software-based network function, we analyzed the latency of SRv6 Mobile User Plane on VPP software router. We show that, 1) for the beyond-5G mobile network application, the latency is in the feasible range (roughly 3–30 μs), 2) the throughput is sufficient with the range in 1–5 Mpps per CPU core, 3) the latency has the strong correlation with the input traffic load, 4) and the latency can be stable in a carefully crafted implementation. The packet interval analysis shows the burstiness of its output traffic that is enforced by the processing of a vector (bulk/batch) of packets. Our latency characteristic analysis can be of help for improving the performance of software router using the batch processing and designing software-based beyond-5G mobile communication systems.

Internet of Things leads to routing table explosion. An inexpensive approach for IP routing table lookup is required against ever growing size of the Internet. We contribute by a fast and scalable software routing lookup algorithm based on a multiway trie, called Poptrie. Named after our approach to traversing the tree, it leverages the population count instruction on bit-vector indices for the descendant nodes to compress the data structure within the CPU cache. Poptrie outperforms the state-of-the-art technologies, Tree BitMap, DXR and SAIL, in all of the evaluations using random and real destination queries on 35 routing tables, including the real global tier-1 ISP's full-route routing table. Poptrie peaks between 174 and over 240 Million lookups per second (Mlps) with a single core and tables with 500--800k routes, consistently 4--578% faster than all competing algorithms in all the tests we ran. We provide the comprehensive performance evaluation, remarkably with the CPU cycle analysis. This paper shows the suitability of Poptrie in the future Internet including IPv6, where a larger route table is expected with longer prefixes.

Data management in large-scale storage systems involves indexing and search for data objects (e.g., files). There are hundreds of types of metadata attributed to the data objects: examples include environmental settings of photograph files and simulation configurations for simulation output files. To provide intelligent file search that uses file metadata, we introduce a novel search structure called Hyper-Cube Trie (HCTrie), that can handle a few hundred dimensions of data attributes. HCTrie can utilize the differences in many dimensions effectively: candidates can be pruned based on differences in all dimensions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach to restrain the memory growth to a linear scale against the number of dimensions, when multiple dimensions are indexed at the same time. Our prototype has successfully indexed five million data entries with one hundred attributes in a single data structure. We show that HCTrie can outperform MySQL in range search where ranges for less than 100 dimensions are specified in the search query.

In hop-by-hop networks, provision of multipath routes for all nodes can improve fault tolerance and performance. In this paper we study the multipath route calculation by constructing a directed acyclic graph (DAG) which includes all edges in the network. We define new DAG construction problems with the objectives of 1) maximizing the minimum connectivity, 2) maximizing the minimum max-flow, and 3) maximizing the minimum max-flow as an extension of shortest path routing. A family of new algorithms called Maximum Alternative Routing Algorithms (MARAs) is described, proven formally to solve the problems optimally, and contrasted with existing multipath algorithms. MARAs are evaluated for the number of paths, the length of paths, the computational complexity, and the computation time, using simulations based on several real Internet Autonomous System (AS) network topologies. We show that MARAs run in sub-second times on moderate-speed processors and achieve a significant increase in the number of paths compared to existing multipath routing algorithms. These results should help further the process of deploying multipath routing in real-world networks.

The Virtual Mobility Control Domain (VMCD) is proposed to enhance mobility protocols such as Mobile IP and Network Mobility (NEMO). These mobility protocols rely on a single agent called the home agent. This leads to protocol weakness in terms of system robustness and redundant routes. In VMCD, multiple anchor points serving the same home network are placed as home agents at different networks on the Internet backbone. These anchor points advertise the route of the same home network to the backbone from different networks. It is similar to anycast routing approach of root DNS. By genuine routing, packets meant for mobile nodes are always drawn into the closest anchor point and are delivered to the mobile node by the anchor point on behalf of home agent. In addition, even if one of the anchor points fails, another anchor point immediately takes over for the failed anchor point. VMCD provides better routes for mobile nodes and protocol robustness with minimal involvement of end nodes. This paper discusses the VMCD solutions and shows the efficiency and effectiveness of VMCD.

In this paper, virtual mobility control domain (VMCD) is proposed to enhance mobility protocols such as mobile IP and network mobility (NEMO). These mobility protocols rely on a single agent called the home agent. This leads to protocol weakness in terms of system robustness and redundant routes. In VMCD, multiple anchor points serving the same home network are placed as home agents at different networks on the Internet backbone. These anchor points advertise the route of the same home network to the backbone from different networks. It is similar to anycast routing approach of root DNS. By genuine routing, packets meant for mobile nodes are always drawn into the closest anchor point and are delivered to the mobile node by the anchor point on behalf of home agent. In addition, even if one of the anchor points fails, another anchor point immediately takes over for the failed anchor point. VMCD provides better routes for mobile nodes and protocol robustness with minimal involvement of end nodes. This paper discusses the VMCD solutions and shows the efficiency and effectiveness of VMCD.