Evaluating native load distribution of ARP-path bridging protocol in mesh and data center

ARP-Path is a simple, low latency, shortest path bridging protocol for campus, enterprise and data center networks. We recently found that this protocol natively distributes the traffic load in networks having redundant paths of similar characteristics. The reason is that every new path between hosts is selected on-demand in a race among ARP Request packet replicas over all available paths: the first arriving replica gets its path selected on the fly. This means a continuous adaptation of new paths to variations on the load at links and bridges. To show this unique load distribution capability and path diversity property we use a number of simulations for complex scenarios, including two different simulators: one flow-based and one packet-based, and two basic topologies: data center and a regular mesh. We also verify this behavior on real hardware on a network of nine ARP-Path NetFPGA switches. The conclusion is that the ARP-Path protocol efficiently distributes traffic via alternative paths at all load levels, provided that multiple paths of similar propagation delays are available.