LCMP: Distributed Long-Haul Cost-Aware Multi-Path Routing for Inter-Datacenter RDMA Networks

TL;DR

LCMP is a distributed routing framework for inter-datacenter RDMA networks that reduces latency and congestion costs by intelligently multi-path routing based on path quality and congestion signals.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cost-aware multi-path routing method combining path quality assessment and congestion signals, addressing path asymmetry and flow collision issues.

Findings

LCMP reduces median FCT slowdown by up to 76%.

LCMP decreases tail FCT slowdown by up to 64%.

Performance improvements are confirmed in large-scale NS-3 simulations.

Abstract

RDMA-empowered cloud services are gradually deployed across datacenters (DCs) with multiple paths, which exhibit new properties of path asymmetry, delayed congestion signals, and simultaneous flow routing collisions, and further fail existing routing methods. We present LCMP, a distributed long-haul cost-aware multi-path routing framework that aims to place RDMA flows on multiple inter-DC paths, achieving low-cost, low-latency, and congestion-responsive transmission. LCMP combines a control-plane path-quality score with compact on-switch congestion signals, where the former unifies quality assessment for asymmetric paths and the latter enables responsive reaction to path congestion. LCMP further resolves the simultaneous flow decision collision problem by filtering high-cost candidates, and performing a diversity-preserving hash inside the reduced set. On an 8-DC testbed, LCMP reduces median and tail FCT slowdown by up to 76% and 64%, respectively compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) DCN routing strategies. And large-scale NS-3 simulations under the 2000 km inter-DC scenario confirm similar improvements.