The Case for Pluginized Routing Protocols
2019 IEEE 27th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP) · 2019
Abstract
Routing protocols such as BGP and OSPF are key components of Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks. These protocols and the operator’s requirements evolve over time, but it often takes many years for network operators to convince their different router vendors and the IETF to extend routing protocols. Some network operators, notably in enterprise and datacenters have adopted Software Defined Networking (SDN) with its centralised control to be more agile. We propose a new approach to implement routing protocols that enables network operators to innovate while still using distributed routing protocols and thus keeping all their benefits compared to centralised routing approaches. We extend a routing protocol with a virtual machine that is capable of executing plugins. These plugins extend the protocol or modify its underlying algorithms through a simple API to meet the specific requirements of operators. We modify the OSPF and BGP implementations provided by FRRouting and demonstrate the applicability of our approach with several use cases.
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Cite (BibTeX)
@inproceedings {TCQMO19,
title = {The Case for Pluginized Routing Protocols},
booktitle = {2019 IEEE 27th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP)},
pages = {1-12},
publisher = {IEEE},
author = {Thomas Wirtgen and Cyril Dénos and Quentin De Coninck and Mathieu Jadin and Olivier Bonaventure},
year = {2019},
month = {October},
}