In the concurrent multi-commodity flow problem, we are given a capacitated network G = (V,E) of switches V connected by links E, and a set of commodities K = {(si, ti, di)}. The objective is to maximize the minimum fraction λ of any demand d i that is routed from source s i to target t i . This problem has been studied extensively by the theoretical computer science community in the sequential model (e.g., [4]) and in distributed models (e.g., [2,3]). Solutions in the networking systems community also fall into these models (e.g., [1,6,5]), yet none of them use the state-of-the-art algorithms above. Why the gap between theory and practice? This work seeks to answer and resolve this question. We argue that existing theoretical models are ill-suited for real networks (§2) and propose a new distributed model that better captures their requirements (§3). We have developed optimal algorithms in this model for data center networks (§4); making these algorithms practical requires a novel use of programmable hardware switches. A solution for general networks poses an intriguing open problem. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.
CITATION STYLE
Sen, S., Ihm, S., Ousterhout, K., & Freedman, M. J. (2011). Brief announcement: Bridging the theory-practice gap in multi-commodity flow routing. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 6950 LNCS, pp. 205–207). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24100-0_20
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