RCNC: Reducing Complexity of Network Configuration

In this paper, we address the issue of reducing intra-domain network configuration. To achieve this, we design an OSPF based routing protocol, named Reducing Complexity of Network Configuration (RCNC), which works with DHT based Identifier(ID)/Locator split routing mechanism RCNC router automatically generates Router ID for itself, and creates Router ID based routing table by exchanging link-state advertisements (LSA) with others, without configuring IP and subnet mask on the interface that links with other routers. Meanwhile, the ID/Locator split based routing mechanism ensures the RCNC routers backward compatible with existing hosts. Evaluation results show that in 10 actual ISPs, RCNC reduces an average of 13.3 items of intra-domain configuration per router when the total number of configuration reduction is minimum, and 6.8 items when the total number is maximum. Meanwhile, comparing with the existing routing protocol, in the 10 ISPs, RCNC reduces intra-domain routing entries by 67.5% on average when the number of entries is minimum and 27.5% on average when the number is maximum. Through the NS-2 simulation, we can observe that the control overhead of RCNC only increases by 1.9% than that of OSPF.