Kevin: de Bruijn-based topology with demand-aware links and greedy routing

Abstract: We propose Kevin, a novel demand-aware reconfigurable rack-to-rack datacenter network realized with a simple and efficient control plane. In particular, Kevin makes effective use of the network capacity by supporting integrated and multi-hop routing as well as work-conserving scheduling. To this end, Kevin relies on local greedy routing with small forwarding tables which require local updates only during topological reconfigurations, making this approach ideal for dynamic networks. Specifically, Kevin is based on a de Bruijn topology (using a small number of optical circuit switches) in which static links are enhanced with opportunistic links.