An information-centric architecture for data center networks

We propose a new Data Center Network (DCN) architecture, based on the principles of Information-Centric Networking (ICN). Our Info-Centric Data Center Network (IC-DCN) addresses many of the pain-points in current DCNs, such as network scalability, host mobility, etc. At the same time, IC-DCN introduces a number of new features to the current information-centric network architectures. We achieve this goal by decoupling the control-plane and data-plane functionalities. The control-plane is implemented in a centralized manner, while the data-plane is fully distributed. We show that IC-DCN effectively addresses many of the ICN challenges in the data center, such as routing scalability, full network utilization, and name space management. © 2012 ACM.