VEIL-Click: Creating Advanced Large-scale Ethernet Networks

VEIL (Virtual Ethernet Identifier Layer) is a novel concept for below IP networking. It addresses the scalability, efficiency and reliability challenges facing the traditional Ethernet, while retaining its simplicity. Furthermore, it provides a uniform (below IP) convergence layer to support a large, dynamic and heterogeneous (layer-2) network that is capable of connecting hundreds of thousands or more diverse physical devices. The key idea in the design of VEIL is to introduce a topology-aware, structured virtual id (vid) space onto which both physical identifiers as well as higher layer addresses/names are mapped. VEIL completely eliminates network-wide flooding in both the data and control planes, and thus is highly scalable and robust. In this poster, we present a Click Modular Router based implementation of VEIL, which constructs a scalable “plug-&play” layer-2 network which has many advanced features such as mutlipath-routing, “flooding-free” address resolution and seamless support for mobility of end hosts connecting to the network. Finally, the current implementation runs on top of real hardware, which can be deployed with several other traditional Ethernet switches, or as a complete network of VEIL switches alone. Therefore, it can be readily deployed to create feature-rich, largescale Ethernet networks for various needs.