The Segment Routing Architecture

Network operators anticipate the offering of an increasing variety of cloud-based services with stringent Service Level Agreements. Technologies currently supporting IP networks however lack the flexibility and scalability properties to realize such evolution. In this article, we present Segment Routing (SR), a new network architecture aimed at filling this gap, driven by use-cases defined by network operators. SR implements the source routing and tunneling paradigms, letting nodes steer packets over paths using a sequence of instructions (segments) placed in the packet header. As such, SR allows the implementation of routing policies without per-flow entries at intermediate routers. This paper introduces the SR architecture, describes its related ongoing standardization efforts, and reviews the main use-cases envisioned by network operators.