Back to Rings but not Tokens: Physical and Logical Designs for Distributed Filesystems intended for Bulk Transfer over E2E Emulated Cut-Through Circuits

摘要

Previous research has solidified the core idea referred to as circuit emulation. The chief premise is that bulk transfer - Big Data shards, for a practical example - can achieve the best e2e throughput when all the switches along the path are in the cut-through mode, as opposed to the store-and-forward mode when under any form of contention. Most networking technology in the world today, including network virtualization (SDN, NFV, etc.) runs under contention. This paper looks into physical and logical network designs that provide a degree of control over contention which, in turn, creates room for efficient scheduling of e2e circuits. The unit of new mode of networking is a ring, but - rather than the comeback of Token Rings, this paper will talk about partially overlapping asynchronous rings.