Abstract
Currently implemented Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) cannot meet the requirement of a data center due to its poor bandwidth utilization and lack of multipathing capability. In this paper, we propose a layer-2 multipathing solution, namely dynamic load balancing multipathing (DLBMP), for data center Ethernets. With DLBMP, traffic between two communication nodes can be spread among multiple paths. The traffic load of all paths is continuously monitored so that traffic split to each path can be dynamically adjusted. In addition, per-flow forwarding is preserved to guarantee in-order frame delivery. Computer simulations show that DLBMP gives much better performance as compared to STP due to its multipathing and dynamic load balancing capability. © 2010 IEEE.