A Review of Scalability Issues in Software-Defined Exchange Point (SDX) Approaches: State-of-the-Art

Abstract

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) interconnect heterogeneous networks and transfer substantial traffic volumes. In the past decade, the number of IXPs has seen tremendous growth, with more operators connecting to these IXPs even though these IXPs faced various inter-domain routing limitations. Routers based on Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) forwards packets only based on destination IP prefix and selects only routes learned from their neighbors. IXPs designed using Software-Defined Network (SDN), called SDX, offer solutions for existing inter-domain routing problems. This paper presents the existing scalability limitations of inter-domain routing at IXP and how traditional IXP structural design can be transformed into a highly scalable SDX design by exploiting the SDN platform’s functionalities in different use cases of SDX. The paper then reviewed how the SDX improved various IXP operators’ scalability by reviewing and analyzing the latest SDX models and approaches, which provide enhanced policies to enhance providers’ management operations and offer good quality of services (QoS) to the various participating members. Finally, we discussed the open issues and challenges in this area that need further study and a solution to tackle them.

Keywords

• Internet exchange point
• border gateway protocol
• software-defined network
• software-defined exchange
• inter-domain routing
• peering