xBGP: When you can’t wait for the IETF and vendors

Abstract

Thanks to the standardization of routing protocols such as BGP, OSPF or IS-IS, Internet Service Providers (ISP) and enterprise networks can deploy routers from various vendors. This prevents them from vendor-lockin problems. Unfortunately, this also slows innovation since any new feature must be standardized and implemented by all vendors before being deployed.

We propose a paradigm shift that enables network operators to program the routing protocols used in their networks. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach with xBGP. xBGP is a vendor neutral API that exposes the key data structures and functions of any BGP implementation. Each xBGP compliant implementation includes an eBPF virtual machine that executes the operator supplied programs. We extend FRRouting and BIRD to support this new paradigm and demonstrate the flexibility of xBGP with four different use cases. Finally, we discuss how xBGP could affect future research on future routing protocols.

People

Prof. Laurent Vanbever

Group Leader

BibTex

@INPROCEEDINGS{wirtgen2020vendors,
	isbn = {978-1-4503-8145-1},
	doi = {10.1145/3422604.3425952},
	year = {2020-11},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the 19th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks},
	type = {Conference Paper},
	author = {Wirtgen, Thomas and De Coninck, Quentin and Bush, Randy and Vanbever, Laurent and Bonaventure, Olivier},
	abstract = {Thanks to the standardization of routing protocols such as BGP, OSPF or IS-IS, Internet Service Providers (ISP) and enterprise networks can deploy routers from various vendors. This prevents them from vendor-lockin problems. Unfortunately, this also slows innovation since any new feature must be standardized and implemented by all vendors before being deployed.We propose a paradigm shift that enables network operators to program the routing protocols used in their networks. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach with xBGP. xBGP is a vendor neutral API that exposes the key data structures and functions of any BGP implementation. Each xBGP compliant implementation includes an eBPF virtual machine that executes the operator supplied programs. We extend FRRouting and BIRD to support this new paradigm and demonstrate the flexibility of xBGP with four different use cases. Finally, we discuss how xBGP could affect future research on future routing protocols.},
	keywords = {BGP; Routing; Network architecture; eBPF},
	language = {en},
	address = {New York, NY},
	publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
	title = {xBGP: When you can’t wait for the IETF and vendors},
	PAGES = {1 - 7},
	Note = {19th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets 2020) (virtual); Conference Location: Chicago, IL, USA; Conference Date: November 4-6, 2020; Conference lecture held on November 4, 2020. Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) the conference was conducted virtually.}
}

Research Collection: 20.500.11850/452272