A Survey on Segment Routing with Emphasis on Use Cases in Large Provider Networks

TL;DR

This survey reviews segment routing technology, its architecture, use cases in large provider networks, and industry implementations, highlighting its potential to transform telecom networks akin to MPLS and IPv6.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of segment routing, including technical details, use cases, interoperability issues, and industry deployment cases, emphasizing its relevance for large provider networks.

Findings

Segment routing offers flexible label encoding techniques.

Use cases demonstrate its potential in large provider networks.

Industry deployments are increasing, indicating growing adoption.

Abstract

Segment routing is heralded as important technology innovation in large provider networks. In the domain of large telecom service providers, segment routing has the potential to be in the same league as MPLS and IPv6 as well as pave a way towards the successful implementation of SDNs. In this regard, this paper is a survey on the existing segment routing work in the community. We begin by describing how segment routing works, inclusive of the various building blocks. The paper describes the segment routing architecture in terms of its positioning vis-a-vis existing networking technologies, as well as the data-plane and the control plane. Label encoding techniques that are central towards implementing segment routing are then discussed. In order to make segment routing relevant to the current domain of providers, we postulate various use cases, their working and issues of interoperability. The paper also reviews the current set of segment routing implementation cases in the industry. Thereafter we position segment routing among the various provider manifestations.