Revisiting Ethernet: Plug-and-play made scalable and efficient
Chang Kim, Princeton University

Abstract

Because Ethernet bridging does not scale, most enterprise networks
consist of small Ethernet-based subnets interconnected by IP routers.
Although Ethernet's flat addressing and transparent bridging allow
each subnet to run with minimal configuration, interconnecting subnets
at the IP level introduces significant management overhead that
increases with the size of the network.  As an alternative, we propose
a scalable and efficient zero-configuration enterprise (SEIZE)
networking architecture. SEIZE provides plug-and-play capability via
globally unique flat addressing, while ensuring scalability and
efficiency through shortest-path routing and hash-based location
resolution.  Switches perform location resolution on demand and can
cache the results to optimize routing paths and to reduce the number
of location-resolution requests.  We present a design overview of
SEIZE and show that it attains the best of Ethernet and IP.

Bio:

Chang Kim is a PhD student of the Systems and Networking Group at
Princeton University, working with Prof. Jennifer Rexford. He received
his BSE and MSE in computer engineering from Seoul National
University.  His research focuses on enterprise network architecture
and management.