Toward a Programmable FIB Caching Architecture

TL;DR

This paper proposes a programmable FIB caching architecture to improve scalability and resource utilization in Internet routing, addressing the challenges of rapid FIB growth and inefficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel programmable FIB caching architecture that enhances scalability and reduces resource waste in global routing tables.

Findings

Significantly mitigates routing scalability issues

Improves FIB resource utilization

Reduces power consumption and costs

Abstract

The current Internet routing ecosystem is neither sustainable nor economical. More than 711K IPv4 routes and more than 41K IPv6 routes exist in current global Forwarding Information Base (FIBs) with growth rates increasing. This rapid growth has serious consequences, such as creating the need for costly FIB memory upgrades and increased potential for Internet service outages. And while FIB memories are power-hungry and prohibitively expensive, more than 70\% of the routes in FIBs carry no traffic for long time periods, a wasteful use of these expensive resources. Taking advantage of the emerging concept of programmable data plane, we design a programmable FIB caching architecture to address the existing concerns. Our preliminary evaluation results show that the architecture can significantly mitigate the global routing scalability and poor FIB utilization issues.