FastLane: An Agile Congestion Signaling Mechanism for Improving Datacenter Performance

David Zats, Anand Padmanabha Iyer, Randy H. Katz, Ion Stoica and Amin Vahdat

EECS Department
University of California, Berkeley
Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2013-113
May 20, 2013

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2013/EECS-2013-113.pdf

The drive towards richer, more interactive content places increasingly stringent latency requirements on datacenters. A critical component of meeting these is ensuring that the network responds agilely to congestion, bounding network latency and improving high-percentile flow completion times.

We propose a new approach to rapidly detecting and responding to congestion. We introduce FastLane, a congestion signaling mechanism that allows senders to respond more quickly. By delivering signals to senders with high probability and low latency, FastLane allows them to retransmit packets sooner, avoiding resource-wasting timeouts. It also enables senders to make more informed decisions by differentiating between out-of-order delivery and packet loss. We demonstrate through simulation and implementation that FastLane reduces high-percentile flow completion times by over 80% by effectively managing congestion hot-spots. These benefits come at minimal cost - FastLane consumes no more than 2% of bandwidth and 5% of buffers.


BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Zats:EECS-2013-113,
    Author = {Zats, David and Padmanabha Iyer, Anand and Katz, Randy H. and Stoica, Ion and Vahdat, Amin},
    Title = {FastLane: An Agile Congestion Signaling Mechanism for Improving Datacenter Performance},
    Institution = {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley},
    Year = {2013},
    Month = {May},
    URL = {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2013/EECS-2013-113.html},
    Number = {UCB/EECS-2013-113},
    Abstract = {The drive towards richer, more interactive content places increasingly stringent latency requirements on datacenters. A critical component of meeting these is ensuring that the network responds agilely to congestion, bounding network latency and improving high-percentile flow completion times.

We propose a new approach to rapidly detecting and responding to congestion. We introduce FastLane, a congestion signaling mechanism that allows senders to respond more quickly. By delivering signals to senders with high probability and low latency, FastLane allows them to retransmit packets sooner, avoiding resource-wasting timeouts. It also enables senders to make more informed decisions by differentiating between out-of-order delivery and packet loss. We demonstrate through simulation and implementation that FastLane reduces high-percentile flow completion times by over 80% by effectively managing congestion hot-spots. These benefits come at minimal cost - FastLane consumes no more than 2% of bandwidth and 5% of buffers.}
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Zats, David
%A Padmanabha Iyer, Anand
%A Katz, Randy H.
%A Stoica, Ion
%A Vahdat, Amin
%T FastLane: An Agile Congestion Signaling Mechanism for Improving Datacenter Performance
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2013
%8 May 20
%@ UCB/EECS-2013-113
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2013/EECS-2013-113.html
%F Zats:EECS-2013-113