Hybrid Cloud Integration of Routing Control & Data Planes

Abstract

The Internet's routing infrastructure has always faced challenges due to flexibility needs originating from policy-driven path rules and scalability needs of an ever-growing number of control and data traffic. Recent Software-Defined Networking (SDN) designs elegantly separated the control plane from data plane and offered flexibility in path rule making, but various scalability issues emerged. Exploring a spectrum of designs, we propose a hybrid SDN routing architecture where cloud systems will keep most of the control plane functions and local router will keep the least of it while for data plane it will be vice versa. We highlight a hybrid separation where data plane partially resides in remote cloud while discussing the necessary and sufficient conditions to avoid possible loops.