Exploring various use cases for IPv6 segment routing

Abstract

IPv6 Segment Routing (SRv6) is a modern version of source routing that is being standardised within the IETF to address a variety of use cases in ISP, datacenter and entreprise networks. Its inclusion in recent versions of the Linux kernel enables researchers to explore and extend this new protocol. We leverage and extend the SRv6 implementation in the Linux kernel to demonstrate two very different usages of this new protocol. We first show how entreprise networks can leverage SRv6 to better control the utilisation of their infrastructure and demonstrate how DNS resolvers can act as SDN controllers. We then demonstrate how SRv6Pipes can be used to efficiently implement network functions that need to process bytestreams on top of a packet-based SRv6 network.