CRII: NeTS: Rethinking Flow Control for Cloud Data Center Networks

数据丢失是当今数据中心网络中的一个重要问题。 像Google、Amazon和Facebook这样的热门网站都是建立在数据中心应用程序之上的，这些应用程序会对来自互联网上最终用户的传入请求做出响应。 在这些应用程序中，生成响应所需的工作分布在大量服务器（计算机）上。 不幸的是，这些通信模式导致网络中频繁发生数据丢失事件。 由于网络中的数据丢失必须通过重传来恢复，因此会大大增加通信延迟（信息在网络中传输所需的时间延迟）。 这最终可能会导致这些公司的收入损失。 同样，数据丢失也是采用远程直接内存访问（RDMA）等新技术的限制因素。 RDMA很重要，因为它可以减少延迟并增加吞吐量，这可以提高数据中心应用程序的性能。 然而，尽管它的好处，RDMA并没有看到广泛采用，因为RDMA网络接口卡（RDMA）无法在网络中有数据丢失时表现良好。我们提出的研究目标是双重的：1）减少应用程序延迟，和2）使重要的新技术，如RDMA。 该项目将通过设计一种新的流量控制协议来实现其目标，即防止网络丢失数据的协议。 该计划旨在创建一个无问题的无损网络，该网络不会因拥塞而丢失数据，并且还保证提供更好或等同于丢失数据的等效网络的性能。具体来说，该项目旨在开发：新的协议，用于快速检测，然后交换机和网络接口卡（NIC）之间的通信每流拥塞信息;新的算法，用于近似每流排队当前可用的可编程网络硬件;和新技术，用于建立无损覆盖网络，以支持传统设备。 该项目的软件将广泛用于公众再利用，研究人员计划将拟议的研究纳入芝加哥伊利诺伊大学的课程中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Data loss is a significant problem in today's data center networks. Popular websites like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are built on top of data center applications that generate responses to incoming requests from end-users on the Internet. In these applications, the work required to generate a response is distributed across a large number of servers (computers). Unfortunately, these communication patterns lead to frequent events of data loss in the network. Because data loss in the network must be recovered through retransmissions, it can dramatically increase communication latency (the time delay required for information to travel across a network). This can ultimately translate into a loss of revenue for these companies. Similarly, data loss is also a limiting factor on the adoption of new technologies like Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA). RDMA is important because it can reduce latency and increase throughput, and this can improve the performance of data center applications. However, despite its benefits, RDMA is not seeing widespread adoption because RDMA Network Interface Cards (NICs) fail to perform well when there is data loss in the network.The goal of our proposed research is twofold: 1) to reduce application latency, and 2) to enable important new technologies like RDMA. This project will accomplish its goals through the design of a new flow control protocol, namely a protocol that prevents the network from dropping data. The plan is to create a problem-free lossless network that does not drop data due to congestion and is also guaranteed to provide better or equal performance to an equivalent network that does drop data. Specifically, this project seeks to develop: new protocols for rapidly detecting and then communicating per-flow congestion information between switches and Network Interface Cards (NICs); novel algorithms for approximating per-flow queuing on currently available programmable networking hardware; and new techniques for building lossless overlay networks to support legacy devices. The software from this project will be made broadly available for public reuse, and the researcher plans to integrate the proposed research into courses at the University of Illinois at Chicago.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.