Bellini: Ferrying application traffic flows through geo-distributed datacenters in the cloud

Thanks to the “on-demand” nature of cloud computing, a large number of applications have been recently migrated to the cloud. To take full advantage of superior connectivities between geo-distributed datacenters, application traffic can be “ferried” through the cloud to provide better service and user experience. However, implementing and deploying such inter-datacenter protocols for various applications, such as messaging, streaming and conferencing, are not without challenges, due to complex requirements of applications and unique characteristics of datacenters. In order to simplify the design and implementation of new inter-datacenter protocols, we design and implement a new system framework, called Bellini, in this paper. Bellini provides customizable elements shared by the new category of inter-datacenter protocols, including a variety of transport protocols, routing policies, and rate allocation strategies. Bellini is also optimized to perform well in virtual machines, utilizing available resources efficiently. With case studies on video conferencing and messaging, we demonstrate the benefits of Bellini when it comes to designing and evaluating new inter-datacenter protocols to serve the needs of cloud-based applications.