In this work, we propose a radical, incrementally-deployable Internet routingparadigm in which the control plane of multiple networks is centralized. Thisfollows the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm, although at theinter-domain level involving multiple Autonomous Systems (AS). Multi-domain SDNcentralization can be realized by outsourcing routing functions to an externalcontractor, which provides inter-domain routing services facilitated through amulti-AS network controller. The proposed model promises to become a vehiclefor evolving BGP and uses the bird's eye view over several networks to benefitaspects of inter-domain routing, such as convergence properties, policyconflict resolution, inter-domain troubleshooting, and collaborative security.In addition to the proposed paradigm, we introduce a publicly availableemulation platform built on top of Mininet and the Quagga routing software, forexperimenting in hybrid BGP-SDN AS-level networks. As a proof of concept wefocus specifically on exploiting multi-domain centralization to improve BGP'sslow convergence. We build and make publicly available a first multi-AScontroller tailored to this use case and demonstrate experimentally that SDNcentralization helps to linearly reduce BGP convergence times and churn rateswith expanding SDN deployments.
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