TIO: A VLC-Enabled Hybrid Data Center Network Architecture

To satisfy the ever-increasing bandwidth demand of modern data centers, researchers have proposed hybrid Data Center Networks(DCNs), which employ high-bandwidth Optical Circuit Switches(OCSs) to compensate for Electrical Packet Switches(EPS). Existing designs, such as Helios and c-Through, mainly focus on reconfiguring optical devices to meet the estimated traffic requirements. However, these designs face two major challenges in their OCS-based networks, namely, the complex control mechanism and cabling problems. To solve these challenges, we propose TIO, a hybrid DCN that employs Visible Light Communication(VLC) instead of wired OCS design to connect racks. TIO integrates the wireless VLC-based Jellyfish and wired EPS-based Fat Tree seamlessly and combines the opposite and complementary characteristics, including wireless VLC direct connection and wired electrical packet switching, random graph, and Clos topology properties. To further exploit the merits of TIO, we design a hybrid routing scheme and congestion-aware flow scheduling method. Comprehensive evaluations indicate that TIO outperforms the Jellyfish and Fat Tree in both topology properties and network performance, and the flow scheduling method also evidently improves performance.

Design and optimization of VLC based small-world data centers

The visible light communication (VLC) has the potential to provide dense and fast connectivity at low cost. In this paper, we propose a novel VLC enabled Wireless Small-World Data Center (WSWDC). It employs VLC links to achieve a fully wireless data center network (DCN) across racks for the first time. The using of VLC links eliminates hierarchical switches and inter-rack cables, and thus reducing hardware investment, as well as maintenance cost. More precisely, to simplify the configuration and control operations, we propose three DCN design rationales:(1) fully-wireless, all inter-rack links are wireless;(2) easy-deployable, it is not necessary to change the existing infrastructure inside data center;(3) plug-and-play, no extra centralized control operations are required. Previous proposals, however, cannot achieve the three rationales simultaneously. To this end, we first use regular VLC links to interconnect racks as a regular grid DCN and optimize the rack placement to shorten the average path length and the network diameter. To further exploiting the benefits of VLC links, a few random VLC links are carefully introduced to update the wireless grid DCN as a wireless small-world DCN. To avoid the potential interference among VLC links, we deploy VLC transceivers at different heights on the top of each rack. In this way, VLC links would not interfere with others at each height level. Moreover, we design a greedy but efficient routing method for any pair of racks using their identifiers as inputs. Comprehensive evaluation results indicate that our WSWDC exhibits good topological properties and network performance.

Design and Optimization of VLC Enabled Data Center Network

Visible-Light Communication(VLC) has the potential to provide dense and fast connectivity at low cost. In this paper we propose SFNet, a novel VLC-enabled hybrid data center network that extends the design of wireless Data Center Networks(DCNs) into three further dimensions:(1) fully wireless at the inter-rack level;(2) no need for a centralized control mechanism on wireless links;and(3) no need for any infrastructure-level alterations to data centers. Previous proposals typically cannot realize these three rationales simultaneously. To achieve this vision,the proposed SFNet augments fat-tree by organizing all racks into a wireless small-world network via VLC links. The use of VLC links eliminates hierarchical switches and cables in the wireless network, and thus reduces hardware investment and maintenance costs. To fully exploit the benefits of the topology of SFNet, we further propose its topology design and optimization method, routing scheme, and online flow scheduling algorithm. Comprehensive experiments indicate that SFNet exhibits good topological properties and network performance.

Uncertain multicast under dynamic behaviors

Multicast transfer can efficiently save the bandwidth consumption and reduce the load on the source node than a series of independent unicast transfers.Nowadays,many applications employ the content replica strategy to improve the robustness and efficiency;hence each file and its replicas are usually distributed among multiple sources.In such scenarios,the traditional deterministic multicast develops into the Uncertain multicast,which has more flexibility in the source selection.In this paper,we focus on building and maintaining a minimal cost forest(MCF)for any uncertain multicast,whose group members(source nodes and destination nodes)may join or leave after constructing a MCF.We formulate this dynamic minimal cost forest(DMCF)problem as a mixed integer programming model.We then design three dedicated methods to approximate the optimal solution.Among them,our a-MCF aims to efficiently construct an MCF for any given uncertain multicast,without dynamic behaviors of multicast group members.The d-MCF method motivates to slightly update the existing MCF via local modifications once appearing a dynamic behavior.It can achieve the balance between the minimal cost and the minimal modifications to the existing forest.The last r-MCF is a supplement method to the d-MCF method,since many rounds of local modifications maymake the resultant forest far away from the optimal forest.Accordingly,our r-MCF method monitors the accumulated degradation and triggers the rearrangement process to reconstruct an new MCF when necessary.The comprehensive evaluation results demonstrate that our methods can well tackle the proposed DMCF problem.