HyScale: A hybrid optical network based scalable, switch-centric architecture for data centers

Data Center Network architectures (DCN) are evolving for increased scalability, performance, and low network complexity. In this paper, we propose HyScale, a switch-centric DCN architecture using hybrid optical networks. HyScale employs Optical Burst Switching and Optical Circuit Switching technologies for transmitting low and high volumes of data respectively in a data center. The proposed architecture is highly scalable, recursively defined, fault-tolerant, and has low network complexity. It also has a multitude of desirable graph-theoretic properties like high bisection width, and low diameter. By exploiting the structural properties of HyScale, we propose a highly efficient and simple routing scheme. In our experiments, the proposed routing scheme gives a lower packet loss ratio by an average of 23% as compared to the Shortest Path Routing with almost negligible increase in the length of the routes.