End-to-End Real-Time Demonstration of the Slotted, SDN-Controlled NEPHELE Optical Datacenter Network
Konstantinos Tokas,
Giannis Patronas,
Christos Spatharakis,
Paraskevas Bakopoulos,
Angelos Kyriakos,
Giada Landi,
Eitan Zahavi,
Kostas Christodoulopoulos,
Muzzamil Aziz,
Richard Pitwon,
Domenico Gallico,
Dionysios Reisis,
Emmanouel Varvarigos,
Hercules Avramopoulos
Affiliations
Konstantinos Tokas
Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Iroon Polytechniou Str., 15780 Athens, Greece
Giannis Patronas
Mellanox Technologies, Hakidma 26, Yokneam 2069200, Israel
Christos Spatharakis
Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Iroon Polytechniou Str., 15780 Athens, Greece
Paraskevas Bakopoulos
Mellanox Technologies, Hakidma 26, Yokneam 2069200, Israel
Angelos Kyriakos
Electronics Laboratory, Faculty of Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece
Giada Landi
Nextworks, via Livornese 1027, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Eitan Zahavi
Mellanox Technologies, Hakidma 26, Yokneam 2069200, Israel
Kostas Christodoulopoulos
Nokia Bell Labs, Lorenzstrasse 10, 70435 Stuttgart, Germany
Muzzamil Aziz
Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH (GWDG), 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Richard Pitwon
Resolute Photonics, 17B West Street, Fareham, Hampshire PO16 0BG, UK
Domenico Gallico
Lucense s.c.a.r.l., Via Della Chiesa di Sorbano del Giudice n. 231, 55100 Lucca, Italy
Dionysios Reisis
Electronics Laboratory, Faculty of Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece
Emmanouel Varvarigos
Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Iroon Polytechniou Str., 15780 Athens, Greece
Hercules Avramopoulos
Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Iroon Polytechniou Str., 15780 Athens, Greece
The NEPHELE hybrid electro-optical datacenter network (DCN) architecture is proposed as a dynamic network solution to provide high capacity, scalability, and cost efficiency in comparison to the existing DCN infrastructures. The details of the NEPHELE DCN architecture and its various key parts are introduced, and the performance of its implementation is evaluated through an end-to-end NEPHELE demonstrator, which was built at the National Technical University of Athens. Several communication scenarios are demonstrated in real time, exploiting a scalable optical data-plane architecture with a software-defined network (SDN) control plane capable of slotted operation for dynamic allocation of network resources. Real-time end-to-end functionality and integration of various software and hardware components are verified in a six-host prototype datacenter cluster.
