Analyzing and reducing the protocol overheads of the MPOA in the intra-Communication

Abstract

The MPOA protocol adopts the LANE protocol for intra-Communication. In this paper, we discuss the advantages and the disadvantages of the MPOA and explain why the LANE is a performance bottleneck in the intra-Communication and the inter-Communication. To verify our ideas, we first benchmark the performance of the LANE and the IPOA. Then we analyze the encapsulation overheads. The results show the IPOA is more scalable than the LANE when the bandwidths increase. This is due to the differences in the number of interrupts. The results also suggest the implementation of the IPOA protocol is necessary when we increase the bandwidth of the edge devices. Hence, we propose the IPOA+ protocol to extend the functions of the IPOA to edge devices and discuss the necessary changes for incorporating the IPOA+ protocol into the MPOA protocol. The modified MPOA protocol is called the MPOA+ protocol. The MPOA+ protocol is shown to need fewer pre-established connections than the MPOA protocol. We also simulate the MPOA+ protocol and the MPOA protocol for the number of ARP requests, the BUS/MCS loads, the connection delays, the number of SVC connections for establishing shortcuts, and the buffer requirements for those two protocols. The simulation results show the MPOA+ has significant improvement over the MPOA protocol for intra-Communication on all those aspects.